


[Nothing Ever] Made You Complete

by Squeeb100



Category: How to Train Your Dragon (Movies)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Study, Gen, What-If, he is dead I cannot make that clearer, this fic is a nightmare but it's my baby, toothless is dead
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-13
Updated: 2019-10-13
Packaged: 2020-06-27 17:00:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 27,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19795150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Squeeb100/pseuds/Squeeb100
Summary: Hiccup won. Proved everyone wrong. Killed a Night Fury with the Mangler, gained the respect of his village, and set himself on the path to glory. All that remains is the small task of coming to terms with the fact that glory...may not be all it's cracked up to be. Meanwhile, it's only a matter of time before word that Berk's heir killed a Night Fury begins to spread.“Hiccup straightened up. ‘I did this,’ he reminded himself, still in awe. In reality, he hadn’t killed the dragon—the fall had. The thing’s wings were tattered to Hel and its thick flank was marred by the branches of the trees it had fallen through. Hiccup wondered if it had died on impact. ‘I killed a dragon! Ha-ha!’ He laughed a little hysterically. ‘And Dad wasn’t going to let me into Dragon Training!’Specific content warnings are posted at beginnings of chapters. Title from Golden Eagle by AJJ.





	1. Hiccup Kills a Dragon

**Author's Note:**

> I hate myself too. I feel like maybe there’s an unspoken rule in this fandom that you don’t kill Toothless, but after Grimmel existed and made me question everything I needed to write this. Because the insinuation that Hiccup could be just like Grimmel was interesting to me. I feel like Hiccup could easily be set on Grimmel’s path and still be a completely different person. Join me as I explore that plot thread.
> 
> Content warnings for this chapter:  
> \- MAJOR character death  
> \- Dismembering a corpse (treatment of a corpse as one would that of an enemy or a trapped animal)  
> \- Blood. There’s blood, guys. Dragons??? Have a lot of it???

“The gods hate me,” Hiccup groaned, tucking his notebook back under his arm. He’d hit the Night Fury, he’d _seen it go down,_ just off Raven Point! But he’d searched almost the entire area and hadn’t seen hide nor…scale of the beast. “Most people lose their knife or their mug. No, not me, I managed to lose an entire _dragon!”_ Gods, would Snotlout have a field day with this. Hiccup had made some fairly grandiose claims in the past (he’d _had_ that Nightmare, he’d sworn! He’d chosen the wrong dragon to use a flammable rope trap on), but a _Night Fury?_ He’d better come up with evidence, fast, or he’d _never_ live it down.

Growing irritated with the brush (he’d been wandering around in the overgrown woods for hours, it felt like), he batted a branch out of his face. Predictably, it swung back and smacked him with what he could have sworn was _twice_ the force he had exerted on _it._

“Ow!” He flinched away, then paused. The tree the branch belonged to was twisted and bowed over in front of him, as if something falling at _very_ high velocity had struck it. A glance at the ground revealed a deep furrow, lined with dark scales. If he looked closely he could see the rusty color of dry blood that streaked the soil.

This was promising.

It was all too clear which direction the Night Fury had fallen in, and Hiccup scrambled awkwardly downhill toward the probable crash site. This thing had been going _fast;_ its speed had carried it out of a dip and over a ridge _._ He nearly tripped several times in his haste to find where the track ended, and then was focusing so hard on the incredible _size_ of the thing that must have made these marks that when he glanced up to see the downed beast he nearly had a heart attack. He instinctively ducked back behind the ridge.

When no furious roars or deadly blasts sounded, Hiccup rose again. The beast was still. And if he wanted to prove himself, he would have to approach it. That’s what heroes did. Swallowing hard, he stood and fumbled for the dagger he used for whittling blocks of wood and bits of charcoal—just in case. Then he stumbled down the hill (heroically) and pressed himself against a rock, shielding himself from the creature’s view.

His heart and his feet were in absolute agreement that he should _not_ move closer, but the dragon seemed fairly incapacitated, so Hiccup crept around the corner, brandishing his knife, and sized up his catch.

“Oh wow.” _His_ catch. This dragon, the _unholy offspring of lightning and death,_ and _he_ had defeated it! “I-I, I did it! _Oh,_ I did it, this fixes _everything!”_ He stepped closer, amazed in spite of himself. There was no doubt now. His dad would be so impressed. _Everyone_ would be so impressed. “Yes!” He planted one foot on the dragon’s mighty chest with a grandiose gesture, puffing out his chest. “I have brought down this mighty beast!”

The dragon’s hide was hard, unyielding, and he marveled at his own accomplishment. He wondered if he was the first person ever to see a Night Fury. The first to kill one. Wouldn’t that be something.

“It’s…it’s smaller, than I expected,” he admitted breathlessly. For something so feared, which could do such heavy damage, he had imagined a great ferocious beast more spiny and toothy than a Nadder or a Nightmare. This dragon was small and sleek, covered in flaps and spines that Hiccup had never observed on another dragon. “I guess that’s better for flying fast,” he murmured. “ _Gods,_ what this thing must fly like.” He removed his foot from the dragon’s chest and wondered if the thing was truly dead, or just waiting for him to let down his guard. He kicked it and hurt his foot and it didn’t budge, which was embarrassing. There was nobody to see, though, so he was allowed to be a weakling out here. He’d earned it, anyway.

“Are you breathing?” He crouched hesitantly, keeping his knife at the ready, and held a hand in front of the dragon’s nostrils. He didn’t _feel_ anything. Then, against his better judgement, he nudged the creature’s tremendous bulky leg aside and pressed an ear to its chest. Dead.

Hiccup straightened up. “I _did_ this,” he reminded himself, still in awe. In reality, he hadn’t killed the dragon—the fall had. The thing’s wings were tattered to Hel and its thick flank was marred by the branches of the trees it had fallen through. Hiccup wondered if it had died on impact. “I _killed_ a _dragon!_ Ha-ha!” He laughed a little hysterically. “And Dad wasn’t going to let me into Dragon Training!” He circled around to the back of the dragon, admiring how his weapon had coiled around it, pinning its wings and legs. It would have been helpless to fight, with no way to see the weapon coming, screeching and falling and _slamming_ into the unyielding ground. Its last moments were spent in confusion and pain and fear.

“I did this,” Hiccup repeated softly. He wasn’t _sorry._ It wasn’t _unfair._ Dragons fought dirty all the time. This one and its kind regularly hit them from out of the blue; they had no way to see it or defend against it and it had probably killed people. This is what it deserved. This was war, and he was a _Viking._

On his trip back around the corpse, he peered curiously between the dragon’s hindlegs. He didn’t know what he was expecting to find. He didn’t know how to sex a dragon. Did the absence of anything external make it a female, or was that universal? Did it matter? This thing was nameless, sexless, a demon which _he had killed,_ and he was going to _cut out its heart_ and present it to Stoick the Vast and say ‘see? See what I did? Are you proud of me yet?’

“How to do this,” he muttered. He should probably start by turning the thing on its back. To do so he would have to saw away at the ropes, a thought which made him nervous despite the fact that this dragon was quite certainly dead.

“I guess I just…go for it,” he chuckled anxiously, sliding his knife under the first rope and sawing it in half. He would have removed the ropes whole to save parts, but he knew he wasn’t strong enough to maneuver the dragon that precisely. He wasn’t even sure he was going to be able to roll it onto its back. When every rope had been snapped, he tried, pushing up against the beast with his back and his hands, feet scrambling in the dust. No matter what position he tried, he just couldn’t get the thing to budge.

“Alright, sideways. This is a sideways kind of heart removal day. Alright. Okay.” He took a deep breath as he crouched next to the dragon, shoving its leg out of the way and resting it on the dragon’s side. “Cool. This is fine. Heart removal.” He hesitated for only a moment before he plunged his knife into the center of the dragon’s chest.

Dragon hide was _hard to cut._ He knew this, but it was still immensely frustrating to try to make any headway hacking away with his pathetic little knife. And the dragon was bleeding _everywhere,_ nobody ever sang about that in sagas, all the blood that was involved in ripping your enemy’s heart out. It was still lukewarm. When he eventually got past the hide and the impressive layers of muscle, he hit the ribcage, which was altogether a new kind of hell. He eventually had to get a rock and _drop_ it on the thing’s chest, which did, in fact, crack the ribs enough that he could finesse them out of the way. Then he had to reach into the chest cavity up to his elbows with both hands and cut all the arteries (so much blood! So much!) before he finally wrenched the dragon’s heart free.

“Ah, ew ew ew ew.” The dragon’s chest slurped as air filled the void left by Hiccup’s arms and the heart. It was _huge._ Bigger than Hiccup’s head, he thought. And it was heavy. He was no expert at heart removal (had never done it before, in fact), so it was a little mangled, but it was still clearly a heart. How to prove it a _Night Fury_ heart?

“Scales,” he decided.

***

Lugging a 20-pound dragon heart through the woods wasn’t easy or fun, it turned out. The exhilaration of his achievement had run out with the dragon blood that was currently soaking into the entire front of him, and by the time he reached the village he was sticky and out of breath and just glad to be _done._ He certainly wasn’t ready to deal with Snotlout’s shit, but the gods hated him. Snotlout was the first person to spot him. It could have been Astrid—he was sweaty and bloody and probably looking pretty cool. It could have been Gobber—see? It worked! It could have been his dad. That would probably have been best.

Alas, Snotlout.

“Hey, Useless, find that— _whoa,_ Thor’s crusty—what is _that?”_

“Heart,” Hiccup gasped. “Hey, where’s my dad?”

“What did you _do?”_ Snotlout gaped, leaning in _far_ too close for comfort to inspect the dragon heart. “Followup question, whatever magic potion you chugged to suddenly be this badass, can I have some?”

Hiccup was going to kick him in the shin, he was really going to do it. “My dad,” he ground out. “Please.”

“Uh, yeah, I think he’s by that Thorston house that caught fire last night. Oh _man,_ I gotta tell the others about this.” Snotlout stood up and grinned. “Who knew you had it in you, Fishbone?” And with that, thankfully, he scampered off.

The sight of Hiccup received mixed reactions in the village. Some people reacted with panic, scurrying off to find a healer or Stoick at the first sight of blood. Some approached him and tried to talk to him, when really he didn’t want to tell the story 87 times and just wanted to show the damned thing to his dad. Then they could have a whole big meeting or something, he didn’t care.

Stoick himself reacted with absolute _panic,_ which was unexpected.

“Hiccup! Odin’s _beard,_ boy, what’s happened to you?” Stoick sprinted over and started to fuss over him like a mother hen, which was not quite the reception he’d wanted, to say the least. “I _told_ you to stay inside, what got to you?”

Hiccup scrambled backward, leaning heavily against the weight of the heart. “Relax, dad, it’s not my blood.” He awkwardly hefted the dragon heart up and thrust it at Stoick, who just…stopped and stared. His jaw actually dropped a little bit, which was satisfying.

“Where…did you get that?” Stoick’s brow furrowed and something approaching _wonder_ entered his countenance. He reached out and plucked the heart from Hiccup’s arms like it was nothing. “What is it from?” 

“I hit a Night Fury.” Hiccup repeated his line from earlier in the morning with what he hoped wasn’t _too_ self-satisfied a smirk.

Stoick scoffed, sounding somewhere between wonder and disbelief. Then he blinked and shook his head a few times as if he was recalibrating. “No. No, where did you get this. Is it tha’ Nightmare Hoark got?”

“T’ain’t big enough,” Gobber argued, waddling in from behind Hiccup. “Gronckle size, maybe, but not a nightmare. Too big for a Nadder. Not the right shape for a Zippleback.”

“Yeah, because it’s from a Night Fury,” Hiccup repeated, frustrated. “Look, I, I have proof, I have scales.” He could see people gathering around them, noticing with a flutter that Astrid had appeared. He fumbled in his vest for the pocket where he’d stowed the scales, pulling them out and brandishing them at Stoick. Blood was rubbing off his hands onto everything, which was gross, but the scales were shiny and inky black. Unmistakable.

“ _What_ in the _name of—”_ Stoick breathed. Gobber held out a hand and Hiccup offered him the scales.

“Aye, they’re Night Fury scales alright. Stoick, he may not be pullin’ yer leg. He might’ve got one.”

“Impossible, nobody’s ever killed a Night Fury!” Hiccup picked out a Hofferson’s shout among the outrage that exploded at the insinuation that Hiccup had done something amazing.

“He could’ve picked them up off the ground!” Spitelout interjected. “The beasts leave scales all the time!”

“Oh, for crying out lou—I’ll _show_ you. I know exactly where it is, I will take you there _now_ and _prove_ that I actually did it! Is that so hard to believe?” Hiccup put a valiant effort toward holding his ground, which was difficult with at least a hundred Vikings shouting at you.

A murmur rippled through the accumulating crowd and Hiccup rolled his eyes. “Come on, then, I’ll take you there. It’s just off raven point, I shot it down while it was circling back from a strike and the fall killed it. Dad, I’m _not_ joking, I’m not making this up!”

Stoick looked at the heart, at the scales, and then at Hiccup. Hope filled his eyes and Hiccup watched him crush it down. Better not to be heartbroken by inevitable disappointment. He let out a heavy sigh. “Alright, boy. Lead the way.”

“Now?”

“Yes, go!” Stoick made a shooing gesture.

“A-alright, okay! Come on.” Hiccup trotted off, nerves jittering. This couldn’t have been easy, of course not. He was Hiccup the Useless, Stoick’s Disappointment. The fact that he’d designed and built a functioning weapon clearly wasn’t proof enough that the weapon had functioned, and so he was tramping off through the woods for the second time that day with his father, Gobber, and his agemates in tow. The rest of Berk had clearly decided that it wasn’t worth it. He’d taken the heart from a yak or something, picked the scales up near the watchtower. Gods forbid anyone take him at his word.

But already he felt a deep-seated satisfaction with the knowledge that he was about to prove them all wrong.

Stoick was following Hiccup closely, giving the general impression that he had halved his usual pace to allow his small and easily-winded son to lead the way. He was still carrying the heart, which was disconcerting, and hadn’t said a single word. Gobber was next, limping and huffing, and Hiccup would have slowed down if he hadn’t known his mentor would be offended. Astrid, Snotlout, Fishlegs and the twins were trailing behind, leaving a respectful amount of distance between themselves and their chief and his crazy blood-drenched son, talking quietly to each other. Even Fishlegs, who they used to beat up all the time, was included in their little bonfire party, which was a fun thing that Hiccup didn’t at all resent.

“It knocked this tree over when it fell,” Hiccup pointed, and the gasps and mutters were evidence that perhaps his tagalongs were really beginning to believe him. “This furrow in the ground is from impact. It went over this ridge and ended up—”

Stoick, who was significantly taller than Hiccup, clearly noticed the Night Fury first. He gasped. “Great Odin’s—that’s!”

“Night Fury,” Gobber confirmed, though how _he_ knew better than the rest of them was…unclear, as usual.

The dead Night Fury was just where Hiccup had left it, now in a sizable pool of blood. Hiccup and Stoick stumbled down the hill and Stoick jogged across the crash site to kneel at the creature’s side.

“So this is the demon that’s terrorized us,” he muttered, hands skimming across the silky dark flank in awe.

“Wee thing, ain’ it?” Gobber said bluntly.

“Faster than all the demons in Hel, though. How did you manage?” Stoick turned a bewildered eye to Hiccup. His hand still absently stroked the Night Fury’s scales, feeling along the gaping wound where Hiccup had removed its heart.

“The Mangler did all the work,” Hiccup muttered, choosing a specific patch of scales near the dragon’s eye to focus on.

“The what?”

“The ah—the bola thrower. That I made. I shot it at the dragon’s silhouette, against the stars, and guess I just…lucky shot?” Nope, nope nope. He was supposed to be gloating. ‘Lucky shot’ was definitely not something one heard in sagas.

“Hiccup, son,” Stoick started slowly, shaking his head. He was still looking down at the dragon. “I am so… _proud_ of you!” He leaped to his feet and grabbed Hiccup in what felt more like a death grip than a hug.

Hiccup scrabbled at his father’s back fruitlessly with his fingernails, feet dangling equally useless in the air. “Thanks, Dad, you are _killing_ me,” he squeaked out, and was quickly dropped. Whoo, he was lightheaded. Alright.

“This is _sick,”_ Ruffnut observed loudly. “Look what you did to its _tail!_ ”

The teens had slowly crept closer to the Night Fury’s corpse and were examining it with interest.

“What the _tree_ did,” Astrid corrected her, shooting Hiccup an absolute _look._ “ _He_ didn’t do anything.”

“He shot it,” Fishlegs supplied helpfully. “That’s pretty cool! _Oooh_ , did you _know_ that nobody’s ever even _seen_ a Night Fury and lived to talk about it? We could be the first people _ever_ to write a record about it!”

“But it’s dead! Not much helpful information there.”

“Oh, so what, you suggest he keep it alive for experimentation?” Tuffnut asked. “Because that sounds like a great idea, that would be super cool, now I’m disappointed.”

Hiccup rolled his eyes, though truthfully he was overjoyed. This was the first positive attention he’d had from his agemates…ever. Astrid’s denial of his accomplishment stung ( _burned_ ), but he would live. He’d just _killed_ a _dragon._ A _Night Fury!_

He startled as he felt a heavy hand come to rest on his shoulder. He looked up into his father’s eyes, which were warm, brimming with more life than they had held in a long while.

“I’m sorry I doubted you,” Stoick murmured. “I always knew you’d be the strongest of them all.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahaha…ha
> 
> Maybe you’ll hate me less if I told you parts of this really sucked to write? Chapter 2 is definitely the emotional kicker so far though. If you read to this point and enjoyed, leave me kudos! If you are at all interested in this continuing or had a favorite part, leave me a comment if you’ve got the time! I'm pretty sure there's at least one other person who is interested in this idea but I might be wrong and nobody will like this lmfao
> 
> Thanks so much for reading! You all are lovely.


	2. Hiccup Takes a Bath

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So basically I'm screaming this did Not Go Over That Well...I didn't really expect that it would but it REALLY didn't...
> 
> I already wrote a second chapter and part of a third though and I have no self-restraint so I'm just going to throw it at y'all now and perhaps somebody will read it
> 
> Content warnings for this chapter:  
> \- Continued (but not graphic) description of dismemberment of an animal corpse and use of its body  
> \- Platonic (and non-sexualized) nudity of underage characters  
> \- Spitelout  
> \- Underage drinking? Sorta? I guess?  
> \- Feels OMG

The heavy dark pelt of the Night Fury cast shadows around the Great Hall as Stoick hoisted it in the air like a victory banner. His voice rumbled from his chest and boomed around the cavernous room, easily rising above the jovial sounds of a Viking feast. “This is the pelt of the dragon, the Night Fury, killed by my son and heir!” His shouting was rather louder than necessary, but Hiccup barely noticed. _Heir._ That word hadn’t been thrown around in _years._ It was treated like a curse, _ew,_ that’s _his_ heir _, we don’t talk about that around here._ But here Stoick was, acknowledging Hiccup as his heir with _pride._

Cheers coursed around the hall and Hiccup wondered, not for the first time, if he was dreaming.

“Trust me, I’m as surprised as the rest of you,” Stoick chuckled. Yes, the jokes at Hiccup’s expense. That was fine. “But he’s proven himself three times over. Not only has he brought down the elusive Night Fury; Hiccup has had the honor of being the first of his agemates to kill a dragon!”

Hiccup being the first to do anything right was certainly unusual. There were cheers for this as well, of course, though slightly less enthusiastic. The Hoffersons and the Jorgensons, respectively, had both hinged all their bets on Astrid or Snotlout killing the first dragon.

“And for this,” Stoick continued, “I hereby deem him and his agemates ready to enter Dragon Training!”

A _huge_ cheer erupted from the other teens, who had been champing at the bit for the chance to run around in a ring with axes and dragons for a _long_ time. Hiccup himself felt his heart leap—he was a _Viking,_ he was really one of them, and he was going to learn to kill dragons the hard way, not the Hiccup way, and he was ready.

“Lad’ll be eaten alive,” Spitelout remarked, in a way that would have seemed casual had it been quieter. His voice carried remarkably well as it was, sending a shot of frustration and dread through Hiccup.

“He killed a _Night Fury,”_ Gobber shouted. “He’ll hold up fine!”

“Killed it with a ranged weapon! The coward’s way! Boy can’t hardly lift a sword, I’ve _seen_ ‘im in the forge. I give him three days—nay, three _minutes_ in the kill ring

“Spitelout!” Stoick snapped, bristling at his brother-in-law’s impudence. “When your boy kills a Night Fury at close range we’ll have a talk. For now, _all_ of the youths thirteen and older will be training to kill dragons.”

When the Berkians erupted from the Great Hall it was with a burst of noise. Everyone was chattering, talking about Dragon Training, the elusive Night Fury, and the biggest surprise of all, Hiccup’s success. Hiccup himself was making a beeline for the spring, still covered in blood and viscera. Stoick had heartily encouraged Hiccup to skin the dragon and help clean its skull, but he’d insisted on giving the specialists the business.

It wasn’t Bath Day, and Hiccup was glad for it—strangely, he didn’t think he really wanted to talk to anyone at the moment. He was exhilarated by his newfound glory, of course. He was thrilled to have made the kill. He didn’t really know why he was upset, and the fact frustrated him as he stripped his blood-caked clothes and boots away. Bloodstained clothes were the mark of a warrior, but he found he’d preferred the green.

The warm water soothed his aching muscles, and he turned his arm about in the water with fascination as the deep red of dragon blood chipped and melted away. It was really stuck under his nails and he had to work at scrubbing it out. The blood had soaked through his tunic and smeared across his chest like watered-down war paint. It was everywhere.

As he washed, his thoughts wandered to the Night Fury. The day was only halfway done, but it felt to him as if it had been years. Gone was the Hiccup of the dark early morning, scorned and manhandled and ordered back inside to safety. He was a warrior now. The _best_ warrior, by some standards, for he’d killed a Night Fury. And now he was going to learn to kill dragons hand-to-hand, just like everyone else. He’d finally be _normal._ And all it had taken was one shot.

This train of thought was interrupted abruptly by the sound of…he’d estimate about five pairs of boots, not yet full-sized, based on the very loud sound of the twins and Snotlout bickering and bragging. Hiccup sank a bit lower in the water, trying to hide. Bath Day or no Bath Day, he was going to have company.

“We thought we’d find you here,” Ruffnut said.

“Yeah, because we followed you,” Tuff added.

Hiccup turned to see the twins, Snotlout and Fishlegs. Astrid was conspicuously absent. He wasn’t all that disappointed (he wrapped his arms around himself, all too aware of how clean and clear the spring was). The other teens immediately began to strip, Ruffnut included; Hiccup’s stammers of protest were quickly shushed. It wasn’t Bath Day. There were no rules. Maybe, Hiccup thought, that’s why Astrid hadn’t come.

“So I’ve been thinking about that live dragon experiment,” Tuffnut said, giving Hiccup a full frontal view as he slipped his boots and pants off and hopped toward the spring. Hiccup averted his eyes politely and Tuffnut jumped into the water, thoroughly drenching him. “Do you think you could catch another Night Fury? This time, y’know, _alive?”_

Snotlout scoffed as he hopped into the spring, creating a smaller and less irritating splash. “Of course he can’t. _Lucky shot,_ remember?” He adopted a cruel approximation of Hiccup’s nasal drawl, eyes screwed up with what sort of looked like hatred, a far cry from the strange puppy-dog admiration of earlier. _This_ was normal Snotlout.

“I dunno…” Fishlegs slipped into the pool very gently. “If he did it on the first try, he could do it again. That was the first try, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah, the first try with the finished thing. There were some tries before that, but those were more to test the—”

“Who _cares,”_ Snotlout jeered. “It’s not gonna happen again. You heard my dad; Useless here may have _happened_ to hit a dragon with his weirdo machine, but the arena is a different game.” He turned his steely gaze to Hiccup. “You wouldn’t last two minutes against a _Gronckle.”_

“None of us would, Snotlout, that’s why we need to train.” Hiccup couldn’t help his biting tone. Fifteen years should have been long enough to learn that opening his dumb mouth would only result in a more brutal thrashing, but said dumb mouth seemed to be two steps ahead of his dumb brain.

“He’s right,” Fishlegs said. Fishlegs was always on Hiccup’s side.

“Yeah, I bet he lasts longer than _Tuffnut,_ ” Ruff crowed, and that one _was_ new. Even if it was just to put Tuff down, as usual.

“Yeah, I bet he—” Tuff paused mid-sentence. “I’ll feed _you_ to the Gronckle,” he muttered, flicking water at his sister petulantly.

“I think Hiccup has as much a chance as any of us!” Fishlegs added optimistically.

“Oh, I’ll _bet_ you he doesn’t,” Snotlout grinned. Yes, the awe of seeing his weird scrawny cousin hauling a dragon heart into the village had definitely worn off, replaced by the same Spitelout-driven competition Hiccup knew and loved from their youth. “Let’s see, hmmm. Half your rations until the solstice if Hiccup the Useless bites it.”

“Uhhhh….” Fishlegs turned worried eyes to his childhood friend. Hiccup shook his head.

“It’s fine,” he muttered. He _would_ survive, even if Fishlegs didn’t believe it. And not just because Gobber would probably take special care of him. Hiccup would learn how to kill dragons on his own merit. He might not be number one in his class, but that was alright. He kind of wanted to watch Astrid kill that Nightmare anyway.

Hiccup worked on the fingernail blood a bit more. This did not escape his agemates’ notice.

“Whoa, _dude,_ you got its blood stuck all over you and _everything!”_ Ruffnut shouted, far too loudly for their quiet little clearing. “What was it like, taking its heart out? Was it still beating?”

“One time our Uncle Finn cut a dragon’s heart out while it was still beating,” Tuff added. “It was the coolest.”

“No, uh, it was pretty dead.”

“Lame you didn’t get to finish it yourself,” Ruff scoffed, then sneered at the sky like someone up there had just informed her she was grounded until Snoggletog. “Thanks, _Norns._ Man, fate _sucks.”_

“He wouldn’ta killed it,” Snotlout decided. “Woulda been too _chicken._ ”

Tuffnut gasped. “Chickens are brave and noble creatures, and I’ll thank you to respect them.”

“But the heart!” Ruffnut insisted. “Tell us about the heart! Did you have to break the ribs and everything? How did you roll it over on your own? How much did it bleed?”

Fishlegs swallowed, looking nervous and maybe a bit nauseous. Hiccup could sympathize. In spite of how much he knew he _should_ talk about it, should regale his tale as a mighty warrior, he found he didn’t want to. Aside from how embarrassingly difficult it had been, the act itself felt perverse in a way he couldn’t quite wrap his mind around.

“It was hard,” he admitted. “It was like…stuck in there. I had to kinda dig around it and pry it out. And yeah, I had to smash the ribs.” The twins made appreciative noises.

“It’s getting late,” Fishlegs stammered suddenly, standing. Water sloughed off his body as he left the spring. “I should…I should get going.”

Sensing his out, Hiccup stood too, painfully aware of how exposed he was. Tuffnut and Fishlegs he found he didn’t particularly care about, but he really wished Snotlout and Ruffnut weren’t around. And staring. So much. Though he hadn’t reached for the low-hanging fruit that evening, Hiccup was sure his cousin was taking everything in, building up ammunition for future verbal abuse. “I uh…me too. I need to get to sleep. Big uh…big dragon fights tomorrow, right guys? Woo!” He pumped a fist in the air halfheartedly before scrambling to gather up his clothes. He was still wet, but wet clothes were better than whatever fresh Hel he was currently standing in.

***

Hiccup snuck into the house, expecting his father to be asleep downstairs. He was sort of _hoping_ his father was asleep downstairs, in fact, because it had been in impossibly long day and he felt wrung-out and tired. But when he cracked open the door to warm firelight, he knew that immediate sleep was not in the cards, and when Stoick noticed the opening door, he leaped to his feet.

“Hiccup! Come here!” And without pause, Stoick rushed his son and scooped him up into the second back-breaking hug of the day. Two hugs was a lot for one day, especially as Hiccup could count maybe one in the past eight years. Two hugs was _too much_ for one day, and Hiccup heard and felt his back pop as he wriggled uselessly for a few moments. But it felt good, aside from a little bit of pain. Eventually he gave in, leaning into his father’s broad chest and wrapping his arms around that thick neck. Everything here was safe and warm and protective. The hug, tight as it was, was proof that nothing could hurt Hiccup so long as his father was crushing him slowly. It was nice.

Apparently deciding that was enough physical contact for the next _ten_ years, Stoick dropped his son and backed away proudly as if nothing had happened. But he hunched over, placed his hands on Hiccup’s shoulders, and looked him in the eyes.

“Son. I am _so_ proud of you.”

Hiccup glanced to the side awkwardly, then looked back into that intense stare and smiled. “Thanks, Dad. It, uh, it means a lot.” He rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. “This and the dragon training, I…I really appreciate you giving me the chance.”

“Oh, you gave _yourself_ this chance! _Killing a Night Fury!_ I killed my first dragon when I was your age, but this is…it’s never been _done!_ Ah, how did it _feel_ to cut that heart out?”

“Uh, good, I…I guess.”

“Oh, and it only gets _better!”_ Stoick straightened, almost manic with excitement. “Just _wait_ ‘til you spill a Nadder’s guts for the first time! And mount your first Gronckle head on a spear? _What a feelin’!”_ With this he quite literally punched Hiccup. It was a friendly punch but it still sent him staggering, because he was _weak, small._ “You really had me goin’ there, son! All those years of the _worst Viking_ Berk has ever seen! Odin, it was rough, I almost gave up on you, and _all the while_ you were holding out on me, oh Thor almighty!”

Hiccup watched in awe as his father finished his tirade. And yeah, Worst Viking hurt, but it was not a new one. Stoick _meant_ well and was truly proud of him, and those facts alone made Hiccup happier than he could remember being in a long while. He tucked his chin and smiled. “Thanks, Dad.”

“We’ll _finally_ have something to talk about,” Stoick smiled, eyes crinkling, and Hiccup’s heart _hurt._ How had he lived without this?

“Oh, come, come, come, sit,” Stoick said suddenly, ushering Hiccup toward the fire. “You kill your first dragon, you get your first drink. And I have something else for you, too.”

Hiccup took his seat on one of the benches by the fire; it creaked as if to remind him that it hadn’t been used for ten years and that it thought it quite unfair that its work should begin _now._ Stoick sat on the other bench, which creaked for entirely different reasons. He offered Hiccup an already-poured mug of mead and took one for himself, raising it. “To the Night Fury,” he grinned, and Hiccup echoed him eagerly. This was _really_ the day he became not only a Viking, but a _man._

Stoick raised the mug to his lips and took a swig, and Hiccup did the same, immediately cringing away from the flavor. “Mm. Mhm!” He shot his father a thumbs-up before swallowing, the liquid burning his throat. “Oh, wow, that uh…that really does taste a certain way, doesn’t it?”

Stoick laughed heartily. “Aye, I remember my first drink. Thought my old man was pullin’ a fast one on me! You get used to it,” he assured Hiccup, who had gone in for a second sip and found it predictably no better than the first, then set the mug in his lap. “I killed my first dragon in Dragon Training,” Stoick said pensively. “You’re ahead of the game, son. And soon you’ll be doing it with your bare hands, no catapult or bola or what have you. Nothing standing between you and that dragon.”

“I can’t wait,” Hiccup said, surprising himself with his own sincerity.

The fire cast a warm glow across Stoick’s face, lighting his beard up like it was itself made of flame. For a moment he wasn’t Stoick the Vast, Dragon Killer, Sixth Chief of Berk and Hammer of Thor. He was a kind, benevolent figure with glowing eyes and wrinkles where he smiled, huge and powerful and warm and protective. And Hiccup loved him.

“Oh, I…I have something for you.” Stoick looked uncharacteristically vulnerable as he turned, leaned down and picked up something metallic-sounding. He turned back to Hiccup and presented him a simple helmet. No wings or crazy sticky-outy bits, just a good old classic helmet with plain horns on it, like Stoick’s. Hiccup braced his mug with his thighs and took the helmet in his hands. It wasn’t as heavy as it looked. “I had Gobber shape this up right quick this afternoon. It’s made from your mother’s breast plate. Matching set,” he tapped his own, smaller helmet, _tink tink._

“That’s…wow.” The breast hat was a little much, but Hiccup knew it simply came from a place of wanting to share Mom with him. Stoick almost never talked about his wife, and Hiccup didn’t remember her at all. He stroked his thumb across the band of the helmet, recognizing Gobber’s work. He tried not to think too much about the fact that this had at one point touched his mom’s boob.

“There were Night Furies the night she was taken,” Stoick said thickly. “Maybe yours was there. Maybe you’ve helped avenge her.”

“I…” Hiccup stared at his reflection in the helmet. It was distorted just enough by the curve of the polished metal that it looked like him, but _not quite right_.

“You look like her,” Stoick whispered. “Ye have her eyes, her build. She would be so proud to see you now.”

“She would?” Hiccup looked up hesitantly. He knew very little about his mother, but he had gathered from those who knew her that she had hated the idea of killing dragons.

“She may not have…supported this path, but you’re like her. Quiet, _always_ thinking, she was. Smart as a whip, you got that from her. Aye, she’d be proud of ye.” Stoick sighed and shook his head. “Maybe not so proud of me, though.”

Hiccup didn’t say anything. And, for a while, neither did Stoick.

“I haven’t always been the best father,” Stoick sighed. “And it took this for me to realize. You were always so _different,_ and I was so busy, I didn’t know how to talk to ye, what you needed.” He stared into his mug and sighed again, deep and sorrowful. Then he brightened, straightening up. “That’s in the past now, son. _Now_ we have something to talk about. And once you’re done in Dragon Training you’ll fight with _me,_ we’ll seek out the dragons’ nest and finish them _together._ Thor almighty, Hiccup, my son. My _heir._ You’re going to do great things.”

“Thanks, Dad,” Hiccup murmured.

“We’ll find that blasted gold dragon that took her and take our revenge, you and me. I want its head over this fire for what it did to her!” Stoick slammed back some more mead. Hiccup took a little sip and made a face. Had he expected it to taste better the second time around?

“Have you ever seen the dragon again? After…what it did?”

“Nay. It turned tail and ran when it saw me. Knew it was as good as dead if I caught it, for harming ye. That scar on your chin, it gave you that. I spent many nights awake wondering what would have happened. If the beast had time to kill you. If you and Val were taken from me that night.”

Hiccup blinked. He hadn’t really…hadn’t quite expected that his father stayed up at night _worried_ about him. He was a burden, a nuisance, an accident waiting to happen, _get inside before you either die or kill someone._ Once, when he was _really_ little, he had run away for a full day and Stoick hadn’t noticed. It was sad, when he thought about it, but Hiccup had spent many years unsure whether his father or anyone would even _care_ if he died. Anyone but Gobber, of course, who had a soft spot for Hiccup no matter what he said.

“I love you, son,” Stoick said, and it was as honest and genuine as anything Hiccup had heard in his life. He wanted to cry. But Hiccup the Man, the Viking, the Dragon Killer, he didn’t cry.

So he settled for a voice crack. “I love you too, Dad.” He placed the helmet on his head and smiled gently.

Stoick broke the emotional silence by grinning and shaking his head. “I still _cannot believe_ you killed a Night Fury.” He patted his thighs heartily as he stood. “The one dragon nobody’s ever seen, and _my son_ killed one! I’m havin’ the teeth made into a necklace for ye. And I see that blood in yer boots, do you want new ones? We’ve got Night Fury hide now, and you’ve got first pick!”

“I…I can’t believe it either,” Hiccup said. “And I…that’d be nice.” He would be the first of his agemates to wear a relic of a kill, and it would be Night Fury. That would garner some major respect from _anyone_ who saw it.

“Now get some rest, boy,” Stoick commanded, clapping Hiccup on the shoulder. “Big day tomorrow.” 

“Thanks for the helmet, Dad,” Hiccup smiled. “It means a lot. To have something of hers.”

“Aye.”

“G’night.” He stood and climbed slowly up the stairs, maintaining eye contact.

“Night, Hiccup.”

“See you tomorrow.”

“Aye.”

That night Hiccup fell asleep the second he closed his eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fanfiction author? Artist? No you have yourself mistaken I am a NASTYBOI
> 
> Maybe goes without saying, but my characterization of Hiccup is very much influenced by…me…I identify with him enough that his POV just kinda turns into my POV and starts to deviate from what he'd probably actually do. I tryin'.
> 
> So uh. Toothless is still dead, and somehow I think this chapter made it worse even though it's much kinder to his memory. This chapter kinda tore me up in a way nothing I've ever written before really has. It's just the way Hiccup thinks he's done the right thing and that his life is better for it. He killed the dragon and that's what Made Him Complete and he thinks that's the perfect end to his story and I'm just FUCK man. Ruffnut is right about fate being a bitch. I wrote the bit about fashioning dragon teeth into necklaces without really thinking about the implications of it and then had to just kinda sit there and evaluate the gravity of my actions. The boots were bad but the teeth were fucking horrible in hindsight I'm so sorry I'm VERY upset about it. Hiccup feeling accepted for the first time is an ouch. The irreversibility of his actions are an ouch. It's just an ouch. This whole thing. And it'll probably only get worse. I don't have a plan outside of what I want the endgame for this fic to be because that's just how I write lmao
> 
> But to lighten the mood, some fun information I learned! Vikings bathed once a week! Which made them clean freaks. Which seems so out of character for the way they were viewed by the Brits otherwise and it just makes me happy.
> 
> The chance seems slim but miracles do happen, so if you read to this point and enjoyed, leave me kudos! If you are at all interested in this continuing or had a favorite part, leave me a comment if you’ve got the time! 
> 
> Thanks so much for reading! You all are lovely. If you don't hate me yet, I post a variety of content (memes, animals, artwork, fandom stuff) on my tumblr blogs @squeeb100 and @squeeb-art. Come talk to me. Hang with me. I like friends.


	3. Hiccup Fights a Gronckle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There aren't really any warnings for this chapter. There's a vague description of killing a dragon/an animal in distress.

Hiccup opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling as his senses began to stir. His heart jumped a little with excitement before he forced it to calm down, because these things were never true. It was the inverse of a losing-something-important dream, where he lost something important, panicked, and then woke up and realized everything was fine. This was the opposite of that. Between Astrid Dreams and weird Troll Dreams there had been another I-killed-a-dragon dream. This time a Night Fury. How sad was that?

It had been a long and coherent dream, but the convincing ones usually were. Hiccup groaned and rolled onto his side. What a day to be him.

But his boots.

Across the room, against the wall, sat his boots. There was blood on his boots, _Night Fury_ blood, and it _hadn’t_ been a dream! He sat up and cast around the room, and there was the helmet from his dad, there were his horribly destroyed clothes—and today was the first day of Dragon Training!

“Oh my gods,” Hiccup said to himself, feeling dizzy. As his mind woke up more and his thoughts became more coherent, the events of the previous day clarified. “I _did_ it.” He tossed the covers aside and slipped out of bed, pulling a not-destroyed tunic on. The fur on his vest was matted with blood and possibly beyond saving, so he left that in the room. The blood boots were fine for now, until the new ones were finished.

Hiccup thundered down the steep stairs, narrowly avoiding a nasty fall. The house was empty, the last embers in the hearth all that remained of Stoick’s early-morning presence, but a small pot of porridge still sat there. Hiccup hurriedly scooped some of the contents into a wooden bowl and scooped it awkwardly into his mouth as he trotted toward the forge.

The sun was halfway to its zenith, which meant Hiccup had overslept dreadfully. And had been _allowed_ to. On a non-raid day, Gobber usually sent someone to wake him if he wasn’t at work by sunup.

“Ah, here’s the dragon killer!” Gobber cried as Hiccup slipped into the warmth of the forge. “Figured I’d let ye sleep. Yesterday was quite a day for you!” He popped a file off his prosthetic and replaced it with a hammer. “Ye have work to do. Dragon training starts at noon, which means ye have plenty ‘o time to get started on those.” He gestured broadly to a pile of swords and axes sitting by the grindstone.

Hiccup groaned good-naturedly and set his empty bowl beside its crusty brothers on a workbench. Gobber had been nagging him to clean them up (we only have so many bowls, for Thor’s sake!).

You know, you’d think an apprentice blacksmith of seven years would have graduated beyond sharpening weapons,” Hiccup smiled wryly as he thumped onto the workbench and started grinding down an axe.

“Oh, bah. Ye forged a sword just last week. Fine work,” Gobber added hastily, waddling over to a bin of nails. “’Course, I need somebody around to do my chores while I take care of the real _important_ stuff.”

“Ah, yes, how could I forget. That secret project for that secret person who is _not_ your lover, thank-you-very-much.” Hiccup cringed at the horrific grinding noise and shower of sparks that resulted from him leaning into the stone a bit too hard.

“Thank-you-very-much,” Gobber grumbled under his breath. “Don’t know why I put up with ye, brat. Right now I’m fixin’ to set up for Training, but if ye don’t want the safety precautions I can sharpen those instead.”

“Uh-huh, and what about yesterday?”

“None o’ yer business, I tell ye. And yer tellin’ me ye _didn’t_ stay up all those nights makin’ a hatchet for someone who’ll never be the wiser?”

Hiccup didn’t answer, choosing instead to inspect the damage he’d done to the axe. It seemed mostly fine.

“That’s right, keep to yerself,” Gobber grumbled, and Hiccup could hear the smile in his voice. “And I hope all that screechin’ wasn’t ye making the wrong angle on that axe! Ye know better.”

“It’s fine!” Hiccup cried, a little put out. “It’s totally fine.” He turned the sword to look down the length. It seemed even. “No harm done.”

“Even so, that’s _yer_ weapon for today,” Gobber informed him. “No harm done means no problem, right?” Gobber hammered something very loudly and Hiccup imagined himself raising this axe against a Gronckle. The thought just made him apprehensive; in his imagination, he was very very vulnerable to hot fire.

They worked in silence for a bit, Gobber hammering away at whatever he was making and Hiccup finishing the first sword, before Gobber cleared his throat conspicuously and spoke again.

“Now, I shouldn’t be tellin’ ye this, but the adults are fixin’ up bets as to who comes out on top,” Gobber said, shuffling around somewhere behind Hiccup. “Won’t tell ye who the favorite is, but your odds ain’t bad! ‘Course, it’s early to be thinkin’ about the Kill Ring. I’ve got a lot of work to do yet. Moldin’ ye. Young minds ripe for the sharpening. I tell ye, boy, when I’m done with ye the dragons’ll take one look and run the other way!”

Hiccup wasn’t sure about that, but the sentiment was reassuring.

“I’m headin’ down to the ring to make sure the netting is secure,” Gobber called over his shoulder as he removed his heavy apron and tossed it haphazardly over a workbench. “Be there at noon and no later, or you can bet yer father will be the first to hear about it.”

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Hiccup called back, picking up another axe. 

***

“Welcome to Dragon Training,” Gobber said with all the flourish he could muster.

“No turning back,” Astrid muttered to herself. Hiccup swallowed; she was right about that. He’d charted his course and now he was stuck on it, descending into the dark maw of the kill ring.

The gates to the training ring swung open and the teens began to trickle in, taking in their surroundings with awe. None of them had ever been in the ring before—it was often used for entertainment, adult Vikings going willingly to face the dragons inside, but nobody ever entered until their first day of Dragon Training. The arena felt bigger than it seemed to an audience above, and it was disconcertingly quiet. On a Fight Day, when Vikings cheered and stomped their feet above and a fighter clanged his axe against the heavy doors, there was roaring and rattling and flames licked from underneath the doors. Hiccup had assumed that the dragons would smell them and be thirsting for blood by now. But it was quiet.

“I hope I get some serious burns,” Tuffnut informed the group as they continued to cast their gaze around the arena.

“I’m hoping for some mauling, like, on my shoulder or lower back,” Ruffnut supplied, rolling her shoulders to warm up.

“Yeah, it’s only fun if you get a scar out of it,” Astrid agreed coolly. Hiccup couldn’t see much of her through the other teens, but he could see the relaxed swing of her axe as she walked. Gods, she was so cool.

“Yeah, no kidding, right?” Hiccup himself was having a little bit harder a time with his axe. He’d tried to sling it over his shoulder (hurt his shoulder) or carry it in one hand (hurt his whole arm), but had eventually resorted to just holding it in front of his body with both hands. “Pain. Love it.” That was a cool thing to say, right? That was the correct response to Astrid’s comment?

“Hey, dragon killer!” Tuffnut grinned sincerely. “Ready to kick some scaly ass?”

“Oh, yeah, for sure,” Hiccup replied. He glanced quickly at Astrid. She looked really annoyed.

“Try not to die _too_ quick,” Snotlout smirked, looking purposefully bored.

“Thanks for the advice.” Hiccup winced a little at just _how_ sarcastic that had come out.

There was a _slam_ as the gate closed behind them, and Gobber piped up. “Alright! Let’s get started!” The other teens turned away eagerly and walked toward the center of the arena. As soon as they were out of earshot, Gobber clapped a hand over Hiccup’s shoulder and pulled him in close. “I know yer nervous, but there’s nothin’ to worry about.”

“I’m not—” Hiccup started to lie.

“You killed a Night Fury, remember? Without even seein’ it!” Gobber began to move forward, encouraging Hiccup to move with him. “You have this in the bag. Bets are on you! And if all else fails, you’re small and and you’re weak. They’ll see you as sick or insane and go after the more Viking-like teens instead. Heh-heh,” he patted Hiccup on the shoulder and moved off as his apprentice scowled. It was just good-natured ribbing, especially since Hiccup had recently been moved from the “weak” category to the “viking-like, sorta” category, but it hurt in the face of years of disdain. Plus, he was nervous. Really nervous, and, strangely enough, that pep talk hadn’t helped.

“Behind these doors,” Gobber continued, raising his voice to speak to all of the students, “are just a few of the many species you will learn to fight.” His shout echoed around the arena, bouncing off the walls and cage doors and disturbing the dragons inside. _There_ was the bloodthirsty growling and rattling.

“The Deadly Nadder.” He gestured to a door which heaved with each of the dragon’s attempts to burst through. Hiccup had seen this Nadder captured last week; Gerd Hofferson and Silent Sven had caught it in a net, Sven narrowly avoiding a spine shot to the head.

“Speed eight, armor sixteen,” Fishlegs whispered. Memorizing Dragon Stats was one of his hobbies; Hiccup had been endlessly subjected to his wealth of knowledge up until he’d grown into his frame and started hanging around Snotlout’s group.

“The Hideous Zippleback.” Gobber walked by another rattling cage. A Zippleback had blown Hiccup’s house up about a year before; Stoick had chopped off one head and Hiccup had watched in horror during the agonizing stretch of time before he had sliced through the other flailing neck.

“Plus eleven stealth, times two.” Fishlegs was audibly growing more excited at just…the sheer number of dragons he had to analyze.

“The Monstrous Nightmare.” This dragon was rattling less violently than the others, but Hiccup wasn’t fooled. One of these had almost killed him just yesterday.

“Firepower fifteen.”

“The Terrible Terror,”

“Attack eight! Venom twelve!” Fishlegs cried.

“Can you _stop that?”_ Gobber shouted over the Terror’s bleating. He rolled his eyes when Fishlegs shut up. “And,” he reached toward the lever on the last cage, oh Thor he was _really just going to do it, wasn’t he?_ “The Gronckle.”

“Jaw strength eight,” Fishlegs whispered. Hiccup was too dumbfounded to care.

“Whoa, whoa, wait! Aren’t you gonna teach us first?” Snotlout shouted, stepping forward. Hiccup nodded emphatically; he would very much like to know how to fight a Gronckle before Gobber turned one loose on them in this arena, which was suddenly feeling very small and very enclosed.

Gobber just raised his eyebrows, looking self-satisfied. “I believe in learning on the job.” And he opened the doors, and the Gronckle burst out, making a beeline for the very vulnerable and vastly underprepared students. They scattered with a shout.

Hiccup ran a bit awkwardly, weighed down as he was by his axe. This was such a bad idea. This had _all_ been a bad idea. He had no idea how to fight off a Gronckle, that thing was bigger than the Night Fury! And Hiccup didn’t have a high-power weapon at a safe distance, all he had was an axe that he could barely lift. He was going to die. Or, worse, he was going to make a fool of himself in front of everyone.

“Today is about survival,” Gobber shouted over the Gronckle’s aggressive barking. Survival, yep! Time to focus on not dying. “If you get blasted, you’re dead.”

The force of the Gronckle’s charge rammed it into the arena wall so hard Hiccup could feel the vibrations through his boots. It hovered for a moment, dazed, before coming to its senses and charging again.

“Quick! What’s the first thing you’ll need?”

“A doctor?” Hiccup guessed. Stupid. That was a dumb thing to say, it wasn’t funny. Was he trying to be funny? He felt like his head was trying to float away, which he figured must have been the fear.

“Plus five speed,” Fishlegs tried.

“A shield!” Astrid answered.

“Shield! Go!” Gobber pointed and they all scrambled for the edge of the arena, where shields were conveniently leaned against the wall. Hiccup tried for the nearest one, but as soon as he touched it the shield’s edge slipped off the wall and it fell flat on the ground. He was forced to bend over and scrabble at the edges with his fingers, painfully aware that the Gronckle had not stopped charging just because he was being dumb. He ran blindly from the wall, lugging the heavy shield _and_ the axe, before realizing that he should probably pick the thing up properly. This too he fumbled with, trying to figure out how to comfortably fit his arm inside the grip and get at the handle.

“If you have a choice between a sword or a shield,” Gobber shouted, lifting Hiccup’s shield for him and shoving it against his chest, “choose the shield.”

The twins were bickering nearby, and the noise drew the Gronckle’s attention. Hiccup took the opportunity to stumble toward his peers, who were skirting on the other edge of the arena. The Gronckle released what sounded like a painful, searing blast as Hiccup pulled up between Astrid and Snotlout, already shamefully out of breath.

“Ruffnut, Tuffnut, you’re out!”

A glance at his peers told Hiccup that they were also frightened. Fishlegs most noticeably so, but Snotlout and even Astrid were wide-eyed and breathing quickly.

“Those shields are good for another thing: noise,” Gobber instructed as the Gronckle wheeled around, searching for a new target (and, of course, finding them all huddled together very conveniently). “Make lots of it to throw off a dragon’s aim.”

Hiccup could do that. It was kind of difficult, but he could whack his axe on his shield as well as the next guy, so he did just that, watching as the Gronckle, with all its horrible teeth and its tough hide, began to wobble in the air. Hiccup backed away quickly, hoping he could escape its attention (small and weak, sick or insane). As soon as the Gronckle turned away from him, distracted by one of his peers, he took off running.

“All dragons have a limited number of shots. How many shots does a Gronckle have?” Gobber asked as Hiccup ducked behind a board. It was just leaning against the wall, it was obviously for hiding!

“Five?” Snotlout guessed randomly.

“No, six!” Fishlegs cried, raising his hand.

“Correct, six! That’s one for each of ye!” The Gronckle shot at Fishlegs, knocking the shield out of his hand. “Fishlegs, out!” Gobber cried as the boy ran screaming. “Hiccup, get out there!”

Hiccup made a valiant attempt to scuttle out into the arena, but a shot of Gronckle lava smashed into the wall beside him, barely missing his head. He ducked back behind the board and waited for the Gronckle to leave him alone. As soon as it turned away (distracted by Snotlout hitting on Astrid), Hiccup darted from his hiding spot.

“Snotlout, you’re done!” Gobber cried gleefully as Snotlout’s shield was blasted from his hand. Astrid ducked and rolled over to Hiccup, who realized he should probably stop cowering immediately. He rolled his shoulders and sidled up to her, hoping he looked cool, and cracked a wry smile.

“So, guess it’s just you and me, huh?”

“Nope, just you!” Astrid ducked and ran as the Gronckle shot again; Hiccup barely had time to deflect the fire. The force of the blast wrenched the shield from his hand, and the Gronckle was still coming for him.

If he could get the shield—

Hiccup turned his back to the charging dragon, running after his shield. It was rolling away on its edge, bouncing on cracks and imperfections in the arena floor, and Hiccup abandoned chasing it as he heard the Gronckle’s heavy wingbeats getting closer.

 _This is where I die,_ he thought to himself, remarkably calmly, as he ran blindly away and backed himself up against the wall. The Gronckle barreled toward him, stopping only when its toothy mouth came up into his face. Its breath smelled like the forge, Hiccup thought inanely as the deadly heat blasted into his face. The thing was definitely angry and definitely planned to kill him, and all Hiccup could do about it was look into those cold reptilian eyes and plan to die. It would probably really hurt, but hopefully only for a second, and he wouldn’t be around to face the burning shame of failure. The Gronckle opened its mouth and Hiccup shielded his face from the searing heat, waiting for the blast to—

Flames cracked the arena wall directly above Hiccup’s head, and for a moment he wondered if the dragon had spared him. A glance up revealed that Gobber had hooked the Gronckle’s mouth and was pulling it away; he flung it into its pen and slammed the bar into place while Hiccup slumped down, legs weak.

“You’ll get your chance, don’t you worry,” Gobber shouted, either to the dragon or to the teens, who had gathered once again. Snotlout and Fishlegs were breathing heavily while Astrid and the twins forced themselves to relax.

“Remember,” Gobber said, turning to Hiccup. “A dragon will always, _always,_ ” he leaned in close, trying to impress his point. “Go for the kill.” Hiccup was painfully aware that everyone else was watching this exchange. He also wanted to turn away from Gobber’s bad breath, which was a funny thought in a hysterical kind of way, to turn away from a person’s breath when a dragon’s had narrowly missed him.

After a moment of the Intense Dad Stare, Gobber wrapped a brusing hand around Hiccup’s arm and lugged him to his feet. Burning shame flooded his chest, making him want to wither away into a speck of nothing on the arena floor. He looked for support in the eyes of his agemates, but didn’t find it. Snotlout, when he composed himself, looked smug, which was to be expected. Astrid looked disgusted, which burned in a whole new way.

Fishlegs and the twins were searching him, too, looking for a reason the Night Fury Killer had failed so miserably. Hiccup could have labeled the look in their eyes as _betrayal._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, rewriting an entire scene from the movie was super necessary lmao. I could've skipped over it but I feel like it's really important setup for Hiccup's character arc. After this the story will start to diverge from canon more dramatically.
> 
> Trying to remember what having a serious crush feels like is harder for me than trying to remember what thinking you're about to die or be seriously injured feels like because it's highly possible that I have more experience with the latter. Spending most of your time around large animals Does That
> 
> I'm actually plotting the story now and it's going a very ridiculous and Super Exciting But Also Incredibly Sad place I'm actually super pumped and really hope I pick up more readers but if I don't I will still have fun
> 
> Also I think I just breached 10,000 words in 3 chapters (or almost did)


	4. Hiccup Reads a Book

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warnings:  
> \- Verbal harassment  
> \- Snotlout being insecure  
> \- Vague descriptions of violence

“So how long was that?” Snotlout drawled, his voice loud in the silence that had settled over the kill ring. “Two minutes? Dad should’ve put more money down on you dying.” He grinned and shook his head, then breezed over to Hiccup and smacked him on the back hard enough that he keeled over.

“I didn’t see you doing better,” Astrid remarked drily. Hiccup looked up hopefully only to realize she wasn’t defending him; that implication was just a side effect of berating Snotlout.

Tuffnut blinked a little of the shock out of his expression and straightened up. “Y-yeah! We all did bad. Just because you’re a Dragon Killer doesn’t mean you’ll do good your first try!”

“You’ll do better next time,” Fishlegs added optimistically.

“You’ll _all_ do better next time,” Gobber growled, slapping the door of the Gronckle pen hard enough to draw a disgruntled jabber from within. “Astrid’s the only one who survived. If this were a battle with a Nadder or a Nightmare ye’d all be _dead._ You’re lucky Gronckles only aim well at close range.”

Hiccup swallowed, reminded again of just how close he’d come to being incinerated.

“Now scamper off and clean up, all of ye, and we’ll continue our lesson this evening in the Meade Hall. Hiccup, you have the afternoon off.”

Hiccup slunk away without another word, too ashamed to follow his agemates to wherever they planned to goof off. He’d been really, monumentally stupid, he realized as he kicked a stone up the road. Somewhere in the haze of glory he’d forgotten that a lucky shot at a dragon in flight wouldn’t make him any less…Hiccup, in hand to hand combat. Spitelout had been right about his weakness and his cowardice. He’d be dead before training ended.

But the alternative was to opt out. And as much shame and fear he felt at the thought of his father knowing what had happened in the arena, he didn’t know if he would _survive_ the agony he felt at the mere thought of quitting. That would be proof that he wasn’t up to the task. And what else was there for him? Fighting dragons was what Berk _did._ Even the cobbler and the baker knew how to wield a weapon properly. They were Vikings. It came with the territory. Giving up was unthinkable.

Hiccup startled as he heard several pairs of boots clomping up the path behind him. He turned just in time to avoid the twins and Fishlegs barreling into him.

“Hey man, where you going?” Tuffnut asked, bending over to catch his breath.

“Probably to go dig a hole, and just curl up in it and die.”

“Room for three more?” Ruffnut asked brightly.

“Huh?” Hiccup blinked, mind simultaneously rushing through every possible explanation for this behavior and slogging through a morass of self-pity.

“Aw, guys, c’mon!” Snotlout whined, trudging up the path behind them. “You really wanna spend time with _him?”_

“Uh…yeah?” Tuffnut replied, like he was unsure where the confusion lay.

“Two days ago you were helping me kick his ass! Man, what is _wrong_ with you?”

“Uhh. We realized he’s the coolest person around,” Ruffnut shook her head a little like she couldn’t believe the stupid questions she was being asked.

“Pfft!” Snotlout…laughed? Spit in their faces, really. “Take a good, long look! You’re telling me that just because this loser killed a Night Fury _by accident_ he’s a different person than he was three days ago? Uh, wake up!” Snotlout bounced the heel of his hand off his helmet with a dull metallic noise, signaling that the twins should _think, for once._ “He still can’t lift a sword, still can’t lead a village, is as useless against dragons as ever, and still has the same sad little crush on Astrid!”

 _Oh, you’re one to talk,_ Hiccup wanted to say, but he couldn’t force the words out. He slouched into himself, burning with shame. He wanted to die immediately. The twins’ eyes were shifting between him and Snotlout nervously while Fishlegs continued to stand there doing very little for either side of the dispute.

“Ugh, I can’t believe you even have to _think_ about this,” Snotlout groaned. “It’s like you’re not even my friends or something. You’d really rather run around in the woods looking for fairies with this dork than go…like, burn something with me?”

“Actually, we’re laying in a hole,” Tuff started, but Snotlout cut him off.

“You’ve got a choice to make, muttonheads. It’s me or him. Wanna roll the dice? Think Hiccup the Useless will pull through? Or do you wanna make the safe choice and side with Snotlout?”

“I’m—” Fishlegs chose a great time to pipe up.

“Choose,” Snotlout sneered, then spun on his heel and stalked away. Hiccup, the twins and Fishlegs stared dumbly at his back for a moment before Tuffnut ducked his head apologetically.

“Sorry, man, it’s just—” he started to back away.

“We just gotta—” Ruff tried.

“We’ll see you later.” They wheeled around and jogged after their idol.

“Have fun!” Hiccup waved insincerely at their backs. “Set a house on fire for me!” He watched in dismay as they caught up to Snotlout, who draped an arm over each twin’s back. They leaned in toward his head conspiratorially.

Fishlegs shifted nervously.

“Go, Fishlegs,” Hiccup sighed, turning. “You already made your choice.”

Fishlegs scuttled away without a word.

***

Though Tuffnut had certainly taken his sarcasm seriously, Hiccup didn’t end up dying in a hole (no matter how much he felt like it). He was frustrated and sad and _bored,_ and he couldn’t go home because he’d have to face his dad and he couldn’t go to the forge because he’d have to face Gobber. So he did end up walking around in the woods for a while. He wasn’t looking for fairies though. He was mostly wondering how things could go so well one day and fall apart so fast the next.

It was only when heavy storm clouds started to dilute the light peeking through the trees that he realized he should probably return to the village for dinner with Gobber. The other teens didn’t hate him, except Snotlout and probably Astrid, so he figured he could survive. The alternative, once again, was giving up.

The Meade Hall was half full when Hiccup arrived, populated by the slow or late eaters and Gobber with his class. Everyone else had likely finished eating and was out preparing for a dragon attack. Hiccup wandered toward Gobber’s voice, which sounded from the candle-lit end of the otherwise gloomy hall. Daylight was long gone, the heavy doors closed against the evening chill.

“Ye’re supposed to work as a team, and ye distracted each other!” Gobber was shouting. He wasn’t upset; he just tended to shout. “Ruff and Tuff, I’ve never seen a worse performance. Ye lasted five seconds!”

“He took my shield!” Ruffnut complained.

“She hit me!” Tuff returned petulantly.

“And then the Gronckle hit both of ye. I would have expected the two of ye to work better as a team than anyone else, but the only time ye seem to be on the same page is when ye’re _wreaking havoc!”_

As Gobber chastised the twins, Hiccup slipped toward the table, aiming for the place which was clearly intended for him (based on the full plate and the empty seat); Snotlout scooted over to fill the spot and looked at Hiccup smugly. Barely missing a beat, Hiccup rolled his eyes, picked up his plate and skirted around his cousin to sit alone at the nearest empty table. He should have expected it anyway. But as soon as they noticed him sitting out of the way, Ruff and Tuff sent him questioning glances. Fishlegs scooted over a little and patted the seat next to him.

Hiccup pointed to himself awkwardly. _Me?_ Fishlegs nodded. He stood and slunk over like a submissive dog.

“And Fishlegs, ye got distracted by my questions. In battle, ye have to take direction and stay alive at the same time. Evening, Hiccup, nice of ye to join us.” Gobber raised an eyebrow and sent him a sidelong glance as he settled on the bench between Fishlegs and Snotlout (who looked supremely annoyed to have been thwarted. The seat was still warm where he had been sitting).

“Hi, sorry,” Hiccup mumbled. Tuffnut snickered from across the table.

“What did Snotlout do wrong?” Gobber asked the group, diverting his gaze from Hiccup. The group gave a few noncommittal shrugs.

“I didn’t take my chance to slash the dragon’s neck,” Snotlout claimed. “I wanted to leave some for everybody else. Too bad you’re all useless.”

“That seems like the problem,” Hiccup muttered, then instantly regretted it. He was very aware of how close he was to Snotlout and how easy it would be for his cousin to reach out and grab him.

“You were distracted as well,” Gobber corrected him. “You were talking when you should have been paying attention. The kill ring is no place for _flirting.”_ Snotlout had the decency to look a little bashful, but Hiccup tried not to show any sign he’d noticed. “Lucky for Astrid, ye didn’t distract _her._ But where did Astrid go wrong today?”

“I mistimed my somersault dive. It was sloppy; it threw off my reverse tumble.” Astrid answered readily, staring at her plate in deep concentration. She was awfully critical of herself for someone who had actually passed the test, Hiccup thought.

“Yeah, we noticed,” Ruff snarked.

“No, no, you were great!” Snotlout was clearly not ashamed enough to _stop_ flirting. “That was so…Astrid!”

Astrid shot him an annoyed glance and Hiccup would have laughed at Snotlout’s obvious blunder if not for, again, his very threatening proximity.

“She’s _right!”_ Gobber cried, gesturing emphatically. “You _have_ to be hard on yerself.” He gestured to Hiccup. “Where did Hiccup go wrong?”

“He’s _never_ where he should be,” Astrid answered, clearly on a roll. Snotlout snorted an obnoxious laugh.

“Among other things,” Gobber muttered, stumping over to the adjacent table. “He can _start_ by showing up to lessons on time. You need to live and _breathe_ this stuff.” He picked up a heavy leatherbound book and tossed it into the middle of their table.

“The Dragon Manual,” he announced. “Everything we know about every dragon we know _of.”_ Thunder cracked across the sky as if to punctuate the grand statement, and Gobber glanced at the ceiling. “No attacks tonight,” he muttered, limping away. “Study up.”

“Wait. You mean _read?”_ Tuffnut asked in disbelief.

“While we’re still _alive?”_ Ruff clarified.

“Why read words when you can just kill the stuff the words tell you stuff about?” Snotlout asked, pounding the table with his fist so hard that his fork (and Hiccup) jumped.

“Oh, I’ve read it like seven times,” Fishlegs jittered, gesturing with such excitement that Hiccup had to lean away and into the safe radius he’d left around Snotlout. “There’s this water dragon that sprays _boiling water_ at your face! And, and there’s this _other one,_ that buries itself for like a week—”

“That sounds great,” Tuff started, gesturing for Fishlegs to shut up. “There was a _chance_ I was gonna read that,”

“But, now…” Ruff drawled.

“You guys read, I’ll go kill stuff,” Snotlout decided, standing and marching off, finally allowing Hiccup to relax. He wondered what Snotlout was going to find to kill in this weather and thought maybe it was warm enough for frogs. Ruff and Tuff, seeing their fearless leader leaving, stood and hustled after him, leaving Hiccup, Fishlegs and Astrid at the table.

Fishlegs was practically vibrating as he drew the book toward himself and Hiccup.

“Should we like…all sit on the same side of the table?” Hiccup looked to Astrid questioningly, highly aware of the empty seat next to him.

“Already read it,” Astrid announced curtly, standing and breezing off. Hiccup blinked as he watched her go, wondering too late if he should say something.

“Alright, wow, just us, then,” Hiccup eyed Fishlegs, who was opening the book as delicately as his meaty fingers could manage.

“Oh, you’re in for such a treat,” Fishlegs squealed. “I wish I could go back to the day I first read this book! Oh, the first one’s so cool, look at this, oh, oh wait. Do you know dragon classes?”

“No.” Hiccup braced himself.

“Okay, oh…well, there’s Sharp class, of course, that one’s self-explanatory. Tidal Class Dragons are aquatic.” Fishlegs flipped back to the inside cover of the book and pointed to what looked like a table of contents. “Then there’s Strike Class, which Night Furies are a part of, and they’re characterized by high speeds, accurate fire, jaw strength and high intelligence. Of course, we don’t know if all of these classifications fit the Night Fury, since we’d never seen one until, well, yesterday, and still haven’t ever seen a live one. Then there’s Fear Class, which are dragons like Zipplebacks which are super sneaky, and Mystery Class, which has species we don’t really know about…Oh! Gronckles are Boulder Class, which is my favorite class, they’re super underrated, and—”

“Wouldn’t it be more useful to just look at the dragons?” Hiccup asked, turning to his friend. He hadn’t planned on being here all night, even though he really didn’t have much better to do. Fishlegs looked aghast at the implication that Hiccup would skip over _anything._ “They’re grouped by class, right? You can just tell me about them then.”

“Oh, okay, that makes sense,” Fishlegs said, relieved. “So this first one is _really_ cool.” He turned the first page delicately and displayed a drawing of a spiny dragon with a gaping mouth which was labeled ‘Thunderdrum.’ “I’ve never seen one in real life because they live out at sea but their bodies can expand like this to scream at their victims and basically blow them up with how loud a sound they make. There’s not a picture of it but they can flatten themselves to swim better. They’re Tidal Class dragons, which of course means they live in the water, and…”

Hiccup tuned out as Fishlegs continued to ramble, attention drawn by the book’s written description of the dragon. _This reclusive dragon inhabits sea caves and dark tide pools. When startled, the Thunderdrum produces a concussive sound that can kill a man at close range. Extremely dangerous; kill on sight._ The description was accompanied by a charming sketch of a Thunderdrum blowing a Viking’s head off and a drawing of a Viking stabbing a Thunderdrum.

Fishlegs was still talking. “And I don’t really know because I’ve never seen one, but I’ve heard that they’re _much_ bigger than the picture shows them. Bigger than a Monstrous Nightmare! That’s a Stoker Class dragon.” He flipped the page hurriedly. “This is the Scauldron,” he announced before launching into a dramatic reading of the text. “Scauldrons are versatile and can be found throughout the Archipelago in any temperature, possibly due to their unique ability to heat water. Scauldrons are named for their tendency to shoot scalding water at their victims hard enough to cook and slough off flesh. Extremely dangerous; kill on sight.” The page was littered with similar drawings to those on the last; a detailed illustration of the Scauldron, followed by sketches of the Scauldron killing its victims and Vikings killing Scauldrons.

“Oh!” Fishlegs cried. “So, here, I didn’t show you this on the Thunderdrum page, and we can go back if you want, but here are all the stats. They’re on a numerical scale, and the scale is different for each stat, but basically you can see that the Scauldron has an extremely high shot limit and—”

Hiccup wavered, wondering if he should ask Fishlegs to hurry things along. He hadn’t planned on reading the book cover to cover, at least not that night. “What’s next?” He asked. Fishlegs swallowed his next statement immediately and Hiccup felt a shock of guilt.

“Oh, oh, uh,” Fishlegs flipped the page to another Tidal Class dragon. “Here: the Seashocker. This one’s really interesting.” As he launched into his lecture, Hiccup let his mind wander over the page’s details.

The Seashocker was flat, like the Thunderdrum, supposedly for the same reason. Unlike the Thunderdrum, it was illustrated electrocuting its victims, Vikings sizzling and sparking in surprisingly graphic detail for such a stylized drawing. Hiccup wondered how a dragon was able to draw on Thor’s power. Maybe the gods were on the dragons’ side after all. He scanned down the page to the image of a Viking stabbing the dragon in the center of its back; this came with a set of instructions for killing one as safely as possible.

“Kill on sight,” Hiccup muttered, reading the familiar words of warning. Were Night Furies kill on sight? _Could_ they be, when nobody had ever seen one?

“And they’ve only been seen a few times, but they travel in groups, so you’re really unlucky if you run into one, because there are going to be more nearby,” Fishlegs finished. “Did you say something?”

Hiccup leaned in and reached gingerly across Fishlegs’ arms, wordlessly asking permission to take the book. Fishlegs lifted his hands away, allowing Hiccup to commandeer their study session. He flipped forward several pages.

“Hiccup? What are you—there’s so many, we didn’t even—the Submaripper!” Fishlegs stammered.

“Timberjack,” Hiccup muttered, eyes tracing down the page. “Sharp class, uses wings to shear through trees and victims, extremely dangerous, kill on sight.” He flipped to the next page. “Deadly Nadder. Shoots venomous spines, extremely dangerous, kill on sight.”

“Hiccup, I really think you should be paying more attention. We’re going to fight a Nadder, you know! Don’t you want to know how to kill one?”

“Stand in the dragon’s blind spot and slice upwards into its throat,” Hiccup read. The book used words sparingly. He flipped forward several more pages, then several more. Changewing, Boneknapper, Zippleback, Gronckle, Whispering Death. All kill on sight.

“The Skrill,” Hiccup breathed, fingers ghosting over a haunting ink drawing of a spiny, narrow-faced dragon. “Harnesses the power of lightning to strike its victims dead instantly.”

Lightning cracked outside, white light burning through the cracks in the Meade Hall’s door. Thunder boomed almost instantly, the near strike making Hiccup jump. Fishlegs squeaked and curled into himself; they both stared at the door for a few seconds with bated breath, half expecting a Skrill to burst through.

Hiccup turned back to the book, hands shaking slightly. “Extremely dangerous.” His voice cracked and he cleared his throat. “Kill on sight.”

He continued to leaf through the book, searching for the Night Fury entry. “Kill on sight, kill on sight, burns its victims, buries its victims, turns its victims inside out,” he laughed nervously. _Extremely dangerous, extremely dangerous, kill on sight, kill on sight, kill on sight—_

The book opened to a nearly blank page simply labeled _Night Fury._

“Nobody’s ever seen one,” Fishlegs whispered helpfully. 

“Speed unknown,” Hiccup read. “Size unknown.” The stats were listed under a blank swath of parchment where an image should have been.

“The unholy offspring of lightning and death itself,” Fishlegs’ voice trembled. Lightning flashed briefly, making Hiccup’s skin crawl. He didn’t like having his back to the door. He felt something stalking him.

Hiccup tried to keep his own voice from shaking as their candle flames flickered dangerously low. “Never engage this dragon,” he read. “Your only chance: hide and pray it…does not find you.” He ran his fingers gently down the empty page.

“You’re the first person to ever see one and survive,” Fishlegs whispered, as if sharing Hiccup’s feeling that a Night Fury was prowling behind them, hungry for revenge. “You know more about them than anyone, probably.”

“I don’t know anything about Night Furies,” Hiccup complained. “I just happened to—I mean, I shot one, but it was…it’s dead!”

“But we know what it looks like.”

Fishlegs paused for a suspicious amount of time.

“What’s wrong?” Their voices sounded so loud in the stillness and the darkness, even with the heavy rain that was beginning to beat on the doors.

“You probably know more about Night Furies than anyone,” Fishlegs repeated. “And I was just…the book is incomplete, and I was wondering if you would maybe… _finishtheNightFuryentry?_ ”

Hiccup paused.

“I…don’t know. You think I’d be allowed?”

“Oh, yes!” Fishlegs nodded enthusiastically, a bit of his nervous energy melting away. “It’s communal knowledge. When someone learns something new about a dragon, they’re supposed to add it! That’s the only way it got so long. Of course, you need to draft it first and the entry has to be vetted by a treasurer for accuracy, but this book…it’s the wealth of our island. All our knowledge is in here.” He tapped the cover. “And I can’t stand to think that you have knowledge that _isn’t_ in here.”

“Wow, I…Fishlegs, that’s—” Hiccup stumbled, then drew up short, at a loss for words.

“Of course you don’t have to,” Fishlegs amended quickly. “I just thought…I want to see it finished! It’s stupid, but every time I read it it’s not quite perfect. Even if you could just draw it. You’re good at drawing, right?”

“I guess.” Hiccup stared at the blank spot on the page, marked only by water stains. “Sure, why not.” Honestly, the thought of being immortalized in the book as the Night Fury expert was thrilling. Hiccup was a failure at fighting dragons, but he’d still killed the Night Fury, and nobody could take that away.

“You remember what it looks like, right?” Fishlegs asked hesitantly.

Hiccup blinked and the clearing flashed in his mind, the still dead lump of the dragon as clear as if he was still standing before it.

“I don’t think I’ll ever forget,” he murmured, staring deep into the page as if some hidden knowledge would rise to the surface for those who were patient.

Then lightning just about hit the village, and both boys curled up and squealed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oops I did it again
> 
> I rewrote the part
> 
> Even though y'all have seen this
> 
> But I kinda like running along through the scenes and deciding all the little ways they'll be different now that Hiccup has killed a dragon. I absolutely promise that the next two chapters will be this same kind of sorta-divergence and then after that this is going off the RAILS. I've planned this AU and it is INSANE my guys.
> 
> Anyway rewatching the scenes for this fic is helping me notice so many little details. Like the way Snotlout scoots over in the Great Hall so Hiccup can't sit with them--I've seen this movie many, many many times and I always thought he just sat to the side automatically. No, it is Very Obviously Snotlout, the little shit.
> 
> Let me know what you're thinking, what you're feeling, what you're wanting. I have a plan but it's not a super tight plan and if there's anything people want explored I can try and make it happen. If you read this far, leave kudos and/or comments to let me know you liked it enough to do so, because I still cannot believe. That people like this. I like it and I want everyone to like it but also it's such an absolute turnoff to say "Toothless died. He's dead" that I was pretty sure nobody would read this. I love Toofiss I promise this was just a plotline that was nagging at me and I couldn't get it away.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	5. Hiccup Changes Clothes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are no warnings for this chapter. Don't get used to it.

For the second night in a row after the first time in years, Stoick the Vast was sitting up waiting when his son entered the house. Hiccup peered around the edge of the door and cringed at the sight of his father sitting there, thinking and prodding the embers of the dying fire. The door creaked loudly when he opened it. His footsteps were deafening in the quiet.

“Hiccup,” Stoick’s voice rose in the quiet, intercepting his son as he tried to sneak up the stairs.

“Hi, dad.” Hiccup froze in the stairwell, bracing himself for the return of Hiccup the Useless, Shame of Berk. There was no way Gobber hadn’t passed the message of his failure directly to his father.

“Come sit.” It was a request, but it was a firm one. Hiccup was afraid not to comply. He edged over and took up his perch on the creaky stool, staring into the fire the entire time. He couldn’t bring himself to meet his father’s eyes.

“Gobber told me ye weren’t wearin’ yer helmet today,” Stoick said.

Hiccup blinked. That wasn’t at _all_ the issue he’d expected to be addressed. He couldn’t keep himself from a questioning glance at his father and he was surprised by how much of the previous night’s openness remained in his expression.

Somehow, Hiccup was still in his good graces.

“Oh, yeah, I…I, uh.” He floundered. “I really like the helmet, a whole lot!” He said truthfully. “I forgot to put it on this morning. I didn’t really believe any of yesterday had happened, and I just got so excited that I forgot.” He fell into silence, pressing his thumbs together. Stoick regarded him, calculating.

“Gobber also told me ye nearly had yer head blown off by a Gronckle today.”

Hiccup closed his eyes and breathed deeply.

“He said you seemed pretty crushed about it.”

Hiccup’s eyes popped open again. And _Stoick_ wasn’t? Hiccup had proven that he was the same old useless son he’d always been, and his dad was still here treating him like a hero. He gaped for a few seconds before getting it together enough to ask: “You aren’t upset?”

“I’d be happier if you’d succeeded right off the bat,” Stoick replied bluntly. “What parent wouldn’t? But I didn’t _expect_ you to.”

“Sounds about right,” Hiccup snarked. Stoick ignored him.

“Tell me which o’ the others did better?” Stoick regarded him from under raised eyebrows. “Gobber said you lasted second longest, next to Astrid. I’d say that’s somethin’ to be proud of.”

Hiccup took a deep breath and felt some of the tension release from his chest. He hadn’t even considered that angle. He’d lasted longer than the twins, Fishlegs, and even Snotlout. Maybe he’d just been so caught up in his cousin’s taunting that he hadn’t even processed that he’d _beaten_ him.

“I got clobbered my first day of Dragon Training,” Stoick admitted freely.

Hiccup really couldn’t help the double take. Really. “I would have thought…” he paused and pursed his lips. “Didn’t you like, come out of the womb killing dragons?” The question was only partially in jest.

Stoick laughed, loud and booming, slapping his thighs. Hiccup wondered if the whole village could hear him. “Hearsay,” he chuckled as he calmed down. “My first day of Dragon Training, I was so set on defeating it that I jumped right in the thing’s path! I’ve learned since that Gronckles are not very agile.” He smiled warmly, reminiscing. “It mowed me down and slammed me into the wall. But my second day,” he raised a finger to illustrate that he was about to make an important point. “My second day, I did better. It’s why we train, son.”

Hiccup stayed quiet. Sure, his father could _say_ that, but he’d heard the stories. Stoick himself _loved_ to talk about That Time Where He Broke a Rock With His Head and The First Time He Fought in a Raid and Killed a Nightmare. That was who Stoick was, even if he’d been a little foolish his first day. He had been _foolish,_ not _weak._ Stoick had failed because he’d jumped in too eagerly, and to Hiccup, that seemed worlds better than running away.

Stoick was strong and brave and a natural at fighting dragons, even if he’d made mistakes. And it terrified Hiccup to think that maybe he _couldn’t_ be that, no matter how hard he tried. No matter what miraculous Night Furies dropped dead (literally) for him to take the credit.

“What’s wrong?” Stoick asked softly, and Hiccup realized he had been avoiding eye contact.

“Nothing, I’m—thanks. I—I bet next time I’ll do better.”

“That’s my boy.” Stoick grinned for a moment, eyes shining in the firelight (the sight almost felt familiar by now). Then he sobered up and reached his enormous bulk across the gap between their seats to place a hand on Hiccup’s shoulder. “I need to tell ye, I’m leavin’ tomorrow. I’ve had a talk with the council and we agree that these dragon raids are becomin’ more and more frequent. I know I said we’d fight them together, but I don’t know that we can wait.” His eyes darted regretfully to the side in a rare moment of doubt.

“It’s okay, Dad,” Hiccup said quickly, though he was surprised by the sudden departure. Frankly, he was relieved. He wouldn’t have to fight at the nest and his dad wouldn’t be around to watch him struggle in class.

“Chances are we won’t find it anyway,” Stoick sighed heavily. “But we’ve _got_ to try.”

Hiccup nodded. “I get it, really.”

“Gobber’s stayin’ behind to run training. By the time we get back, ye’ll be ready to face them _with_ me.” He seemed so _sure._ Hiccup couldn’t possibly crush that hope. “You and Gobber are in charge.” Hiccup’s mood soared immediately. He’d _never_ been left in charge before, and now he was the boss for…weeks, essentially, travel time considered. This was all but an outright acknowledgement that he was nearly chief. “But in an emergency, Gobber is in charge of _you.”_ Stoick quickly amended, shaking a stern finger at his son.

“I understand. Thank you,” Hiccup grinned.

“Now run off to bed,” Stoick rumbled. “Gobber said he’d be workin’ ye to the bone tomorrow. I’ll see ye in the morning to say goodbye.”

“Goodnight, Dad.”

The stairs creaked loudly in the darkness as Hiccup trudged up to his bedroom in the attic. He was almost as exhausted as he’d been the previous night; there had been no dragon heart to lug through the woods, but he found that there was a unique kind of bone-deep exhaustion that came with nearly being incinerated. He was just about ready to flop into bed, clothes and all, when he paused.

Laid out nicely on his bed was an entire new outfit.

“Oh, wow,” he breathed. He hadn’t even touched any of it and he knew the materials were high quality, better than anything he’d been given before, even as the chief’s son. What immediately drew his eye was the new tunic, a vibrant red color he’d only seen in tapestries. It was a replacement for his green tunic, which was ruined with Night Fury blood, but the color seemed symbolic. It could just be that red was his favorite color, but he rather thought the former was more likely.

Stretched beneath the tunic was a new pair of trousers, sleek and black. His immediate thought was _Night Fury,_ but when he picked the material up, he found it was just yak. The leather was soft and dark and luxurious, and he knew without being an expert that it was one of the nicest things he owned. Usually leather this good was an export.

From the same leather he found a thick belt, plain save for a relatively detailed buckle. It was just iron, he knew, but it shone like silver, and he recognized it as some of Gobber’s finest and most delicate work. What looked almost like a little skull was carved there, with wide eyes and gaping, toothy jaws. There was a new fur vest, too, in a luxurious dark brown which he thought might be bear. He’d also been gifted a pair of spaulders, delicate enough not to weigh him down but certainly noticeable enough to demonstrate that he was a warrior now. The boob helmet was also there, which was probably some sort of passive-aggressive statement.

What made him stop and stare, however, were the gifts he had already been promised.

Lying beside that breathtaking assembly was a new pair of boots. Hiccup was shocked by how quickly they’d been finished and taken aback by how fine the handiwork was. He felt a little guilty; the cobbler would have put aside all other work to finish these in a day and a half. He picked them up and ran his fingers over the fine seams, which must have been Hel to create because these boots were indeed made of Night Fury leather. The scales, when polished, looked like perfect bits of obsidian embedded in the durable material. Instead of folding over at the top, the boots each cinched shut with a pair of yak leather straps with iron buckles.

A single one of these boots was undoubtedly the most expensive thing Hiccup had ever held.

Laid out pristinely beneath the boots was a necklace made of dark cord strung delicately through a row of sharp Night Fury teeth, each about the size of one segment of Hiccup’s thumb. They were spaced out with small black beads and when Hiccup held the necklace out straight in front of him they all hung straight down. The teeth were bleached white and shone in what little candlelight Hiccup had, and he marveled at how different his ensemble was from everyone else’s. Nobody else wore Night Fury as a trophy because nobody had ever killed a Night Fury. These things were for _him,_ and they _proved_ his worth as a dragon hunter.

He resolved that he would do much, _much_ better the next time Gobber pitted him against a dragon. If anything would give him the confidence to do it, this necklace and these boots would.

***

“Okay, so. Let me get this straight. You’re telling me that we’re _not_ fighting a dragon?” Snotlout looked physically unbalanced, as if this remarkable curveball had finally been too much for him to handle. He shook his head in disbelief and stuck his hands out slightly like he needed them for balance.

“In _dragon training?”_ Tuffnut added.

“Nay,” Gobber confirmed calmly from where he stood barring their entrance to the arena. “There’s more to fighting dragons than simply squaring up. Ye need to be quick, ye need to be agile, and ye need to be strong. So, for the rest of this week, we’ll be doin’ basic physical training.”

Hiccup watched as Astrid squared her shoulders and nodded, sea-blue eyes fixed firmly on their instructor.

“So today we’ll enter the arena and you six will do exactly as I say,” Gobber ordered.

“Yes, sir,” Astrid responded quickly.

“Love the spirit, lass,” Gobber threw over his shoulder as he turned to open the iron gates. “Try not to stick yer nose too far up there.” Hiccup couldn’t help but share his mentor’s chuckle as the gates creaked open.

As the teens filed in, Fishlegs fell into step with Hiccup.

“Hiccup? I just…wanted to say, I really like your outfit,” the heftier boy breathed. “That fabric must have cost a fortune, it’s so vibrant!”

“Thanks,” Hiccup smiled. He’d dressed fully that morning to see his father off, Boob Hat and all, and in the long run felt he was overdoing it. There was a little satisfied part of him deep inside, however, which relished the feeling of looking so _nice._

“And those boots?” Tuffnut added from behind them. “ _Such_ a look. Magnifique.” Hiccup was relatively certain Tuff made up most of the words he said. “You’ll need to polish those babies regularly. I’ve got some stuff you can borrow if you want!”

“Some _stuff?”_ Hiccup asked, lip wrinkling.

“Yeah, just some stuff,” Tuff agreed in his gleeful oblivion.

“Your Dad’s really spending on you,” Fishlegs noticed.

“I think the Night Fury is supposed to make a lot when the trade ships come in this week,” Hiccup explained, watching his new boots kick up dust. “Otherwise…I mean, I’ve never had anything this nice before.”

“Nobody has,” Ruffnut whispered covetously. Hiccup could almost feel her hands hovering over his shoulders as they traveled to the center of the Kill Ring, where Gobber was looking like the Nadder That Swallowed the Chicken Whole. They gathered around him, shifting nervously.

“Welcome to Hel,” the blacksmith grinned, hand and hook clasped behind his back. “Drop yer weapons and give me twenty pushups.”

Astrid hit the dirt in the same moment her axe did, lithe arms flexing as she managed pushup after pushup. Snotlout flung his axe across the arena and dropped directly next to her, trying to fit two pushups into each of Astrid’s. After four he slowed down and then stopped.

“Keep goin’,” Gobber growled. “Hiccup, twins, get to it!”

Hiccup groaned as he dropped to his knees in the dirt and began to lower himself. This wasn’t _exactly_ what he’d imagined when he was motivating himself to do better. This was going to be _sad._

 _One,_ he counted to himself. _That wasn’t too hard._ He lowered and raised his body a second time, beginning to feel a vague burning in…most of him.

“Hiccup, get yer arse down,” Gobber instructed. Hiccup walked his feet out until his body was as straight as possible and tried again and _oh, oh this was harder._ “Get yer chest level with yer arms!”

Hiccup did approximately one and one half more push-ups before collapsing on his chest with an involuntary _oof_ sound.

“Try again!”

Snotlout, Ruffnut and Tuffnut snickered, though the twins’ laughing sounded more like pained grunting as they continued to work. Hiccup picked himself up, realizing with dismay that his chest was covered in dust, and managed five more shaky half-push-ups before he could do no more. Ruffnut made it to ten push-ups, Tuffnut to fifteen, Fishlegs to eighteen, and Snotlout and Astrid both made twenty.

By the time they’d all picked themselves up, Gobber was stumping over from the other side of the arena. He’d placed of yesterday’s shields on either end.

“Now to practice speed and agility. Three at a time, yer to sprint and touch the shield on the opposite end of the ring. Immediately turn around and come back. Yer to do this five times.”

“So what does Hiccup do? Seems like he already did all his running yesterday,” Snotlout remarked loudly.

“Snotlout, ye’ll do ten,” Gobber grunted. “Hiccup, Fishlegs and Ruffnut, ye’re first.”

He was segregating them by ability, Hiccup realized. If Astrid or Snotlout had been placed in this group they’d have finished long before anyone else. He wondered if the whole point of yesterday had been to get a baseline impression of what everyone could do. If the point of the Gronckle had just been to size them up;

“Take yer positions.” Hiccup crouched reluctantly by the furthest shield. He vaguely noted that it was the one Ruffnut and Tuffnut had bickered over.

“Go!” Gobber shouted, and the first three runners took off.

Hiccup was a fast runner. Not as fast as some of his peers, but quick. The trouble was he was easily winded (he had years of childhood illness to thank for that, he supposed). So, when they began, Hiccup was in the lead. He liked the feel of the boots, he realized. They were strongly made and supported his feet as he pounded over the hard-packed arena dirt. He reached the opposite end of the arena before the others and though he lost a moment of time with a clumsy turn, the first two trips there and back were doable.

By the third lap, Hiccup was beginning to feel it. His lungs were heaving and his legs were burning and he couldn’t help but slow down. Ruffnut overtook him at the turn (he was so _clumsy_ about it) but the gap between them stayed relatively similar until they finished. Fishlegs still had a trip across the arena to go.

Hiccup leaned over, resting his hands on his knees. His head was going to just fall off, it was so empty of blood.

“Straighten up,” Gobber’s voice startled him from behind as the blacksmith patted him on the shoulder. “It’s easier to catch yer breath.” He raised his voice. “Good run! Ruffnut, excellent pacing. Hiccup, not so much. Think about the entire battle, not just the beginning. Fishlegs,” he regarded the boy as he finished running, “points for consistency. Work on yer speed and endurance.”

“Yes, sir,” Fishlegs panted, looking like a stiff breeze could blow him over.

“Tuffnut, Astrid and Snotlout, yer up,” Gobber bellowed.

The exercise was more exciting to watch than Hiccup had expected. Tuffnut was faster than Snotlout but Astrid was faster than both of them, plowing ahead like a machine with her braid whipping behind her. She knew something about running form that Hiccup didn’t; her legs carried her over the ground almost effortlessly, her own elasticity propelling her forward at a consistent pace.

“You’re staring, kid,” Ruffnut drawled, elbowing him in the side. Hiccup laughed nervously, not sure how to respond to that.

It wasn’t a race, but Astrid won. Tuffnut came in second and Snotlout came in third…and third, and third, as he completed those extremely satisfying extra laps. When he finally stopped he just about fell over before seeming to catch himself. He puffed his chest out. “Did you see all those extra laps?” He asked Astrid, who turned and walked away.

“Very nicely run, Astrid and Tuffnut. Snotlout, put more motion forward and less up,” Gobber instructed. “Gather here,” he ordered, and the teens trickled over, some more energetically than others.

“Now that yer warmed up, it’s time to get into it,” Gobber announced.

“Oh, that was the _warmup,_ ” Hiccup snarked. “Oh good, I was really thinking that was too easy _.”_ The comment elicited a laugh from his friends. Snotlout and Astrid ignored it.

“Ye’re to practice sparring today,” Gobber announced. “To know how to fight a dragon, ye need to know how to fight, period. Astrid, Ruffnut, pair up. Snotlout, ye’re with Tuffnut. Fishlegs and Hiccup, over here.”

Okay, well, _almost_ all of those pairings seemed fair. Hiccup trudged after Fishlegs as he moved to pick up his weapon and then, after a glance to the other pairs, imitated their form and squared up.

“The first thing we’ll work on is yer weapon grip,” Gobber declared, roughly grabbing Hiccup and forcing his hands into the proper position on his axe handle. His palms caught on the leather grip and he wondered if they looked as annoyed as they felt.

Hiccup spent most of the next hour on his back in the dust. The next week was going to be a _blast._ But between dodging attacks, rolling around in the dirt and marveling at how tired his body felt, he realized that the fitness training was ultimately good luck. His chances of improvement in Dragon Training, at least, had taken a turn for the better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi my name is Hiccup Horrend’ous Haddock the Third. I’m a Viking (if you couldn’t tell) and I wear mostly leather. Today I was wearing my blood-red tunic with the yak leather pants underneath, my black belt with a silver skull buckle and my grizzly bear vest. Over the top I put my Night Fury tooth necklace and my dragonskin boots. I was wearing my mom’s boob helmet on my hair (which is brown) and my new iron spaulders on my shoulders. I’m also a Dragon Killer, and I go to a Viking school called Dragon Training where I’m on my second day (I’m fifteen). It snows nine months of the year and hails the other three, so there was no sun, which made me happy. A lot of Snotlout stared at me. I put my middle finger up at them.
> 
> (TBH my description of the clothes was very gratuitous but I had a lot of fun with it and it’s my fic and I get to do this shit sometimes. Hiccup is very fashion-forward I’m sure he doesn’t mind.)
> 
> What??? Is this??? An entirely ORIGINAL chapter? More to come as this fic begins to exit the stratosphere of Normal Plot Development. Because while this chapter is uh, original…plot only sorta happens. That’s okay I’m all about flavor.
> 
> Also I just wanna throw in that in my scene placeholder I referred to the training in the second part of the chapter as “Dumb Body Practice” which honestly just about sums up how I feel about exercising. Also the second part of this chapter feels bad and weird but I'm just going to be done with it. It's not like I'm publishing this as a novel hahasdasfsdag
> 
> Comments and kudos make me really really happy and are good for my Self of Steam.


	6. Hiccup Draws a Picture

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warnings:  
> \- Astrid being physically aggressive  
> \- Hiccup does a big swear  
> \- More vague descriptions of dead dragons

The terrible design flaw about spaulders, Hiccup thought, was that they really dug into your back when 100 pounds of angry shieldmaiden crash-landed on top of you.

Astrid struggled with her axe, which was currently embedded in Hiccup’s shield (another real design flaw, he thought), grunting in frustration. She had sprawled on top of him, the fronts of their bodies meshed, and they were both struggling fruitlessly to escape.

Hiccup tugged uselessly at his shield. “Here, just…let me,” he stammered. “Why don’t you…”

But Astrid wasn’t listening to reason, especially not as the blue Nadder’s footsteps stopped retreating and veered toward them very ominously. Nadders were light on their feet but still weighed thousands of pounds, and Hiccup could feel it’s weight through the ground. He knew, deeply and intrinsically, that what he had to do was _not die._

His body had completely different priorities.

Contrary to the adrenaline high of running from a giant spiny beast, Hiccup’s blood had entirely abandoned every useful muscle in his body. Astrid’s face was _so close,_ her eyes were so blue and he could feel her bone and muscle as she moved against him in a way which felt very intimate. Stupid, _stupid_ body.

While Hiccup was lying in the dust floundering, Astrid had managed to untangle their limbs. She leaped to her feet and placed a boot on his chest, pushing down firmly as she ripped his shield from his hands. The Nadder’s gigantic head barely entered his field of vision before Astrid reeled back and flung her axe at it, shield and all, causing it to wheel around and retreat.

Hiccup lay there panting, his sore chest complaining each time it expanded. His fingers and the palms of his hand hurt from having the shield ripped away, and Ruffnut and Tuffnut were laughing.

“Well done, Astrid,” Gobber praised, stumping over to wrangle the bruised Nadder back into its pen.

Hiccup rolled over and picked himself up slowly, making sure no bones were broken. Before he had the chance to get off his knees, he was yanked violently forward and up into Astrid’s flushed face. She had one hand tangled in his necklace and the teeth behind his neck were digging into his flesh so hard he thought they were breaking skin (seriously, who was the person in charge of designing _things?)._

Astrid’s breath was hot as she puffed _rage_ against his face. He tried to meet her eyes but they were too close, too intense, and he ducked away, submitting.

“Is this some kind of a joke to you?” She demanded, her nose nearly pressed to his forehead as she gave him a little shake. Ow ow _ow,_ teeth!

“Ah, nuh. Uh-uh, no,” Hiccup insisted. Astrid held him by the necklace for a few moments before shoving him back with a toothy hand to the chest. He stumbled, struggling not to fall in the dirt.

“You think you’re some kind of hero,” she informed him. “Always leaping into it headfirst because the gods, for _some reason,_ handed you a dead Night Fury. You can’t _do that.”_ She jabbed him in the chest with her finger and he really _did_ fall on his ass.

Hiccup dared to look up into Astrid’s eyes and saw her there, haloed by the sun, furious and resplendent.

“You think you’re some kind of hero,” Astrid sighed, sounding like a disappointed parent. “But you’re _nothing_ without some crazy idea to hide behind.”

And she turned and stalked off, leaving Hiccup, bruised and likely bleeding, on his rear in the dirt.

***

“You’re nothing without a crazy idea to hide behind,” Hiccup mocked to himself, kicking a small stone hard enough that it skittered several feet down the path. He was wandering in the woods as he was prone to do, having been freed from his duties at the forge and spared from Snotlout and the twins’ task of cleaning up the arena. He’d wound through the trees without much of a path, not really caring where he ended up, stewing in his awful luck. _Nothing without a crazy idea to hide behind._ He snaked a hand up under his necklace and glanced down at the sharp teeth glimmering between his fingers. Really, they were proof of exactly that; Astrid could survive a Gronckle attack and fend off a Nadder, but Hiccup still floundered in hand-to-hand combat. The only reason he’d _killed_ that damn Night Fury had been the Mangler, and things like that weren’t convenient (or allowed) in Dragon Training.

Astrid’s criticism had hurt more than a beating from Snotlout or beratement from the adults. The one thing more upsetting, perhaps, was being punished by his father or Gobber. Disappointment was a much worse look on someone you respected.

“I can’t _believe_ it,” Hiccup muttered. “I wish I’d never shot the thing in the first place.” The disappointment would have gone nearly unnoticed, then. It would have been completely normal. Having risen to glory for a few brief seconds had made Hiccup’s fall from grace all the more painful. People _expected_ things of him now, and he was helpless to provide.

Even the comfort of being the Night Fury Killer was wearing _very_ thin. It had been a blip. Impressive, but unhelpful in the long run. Unless…

With a start, Hiccup remembered Fishlegs’ request of him. His few moments of fame could have _some_ lasting effect, perhaps, if he made an honest contribution to the Book of Dragons. It might make him feel better, too, to relive the feeling of realizing he’d actually done something _right._ He rerouted toward the clearing where he’d found the dragon and realized that he’d come quite close to the spot without realizing it. He wondered: was that just more dumb luck, or had something been pulling him here?

It had only been a week, Hiccup realized as he crested the small ridge the dragon had slammed into. It felt like years. But the blood was still there, dried into the dust in a deep brown; the rest of the dragon had been removed, its parts to be used for food and weapons and trophies. Traders had come through and retrieved some of the wares as well; doubtless, it would be a matter of weeks before word of the Night Fury spread to the rest of the archipelago.

Hiccup crept over to the bloody gash in the ground and marveled once again at how small it seemed. He stood in the center and scuffed the dust with his toe, expecting the bloody layer to lift. It just scooted to the side, the dust underneath remaining dark. Stained deep.

He trotted back to the nearby boulder and scrambled up the side, perching on top with his sketchbook and whipping his knife out of his vest. He did a double take at the blood still encrusted along the crack between handle and blade, surprised that he hadn’t cleaned it. He hadn’t unsheathed it since using it on the dragon, he realized. Hiccup took a moment to run his thumb over the dirty blade. Astrid would probably hate him for this as well, if she could have seen it. Irresponsible weapon care wasn’t befitting a dragon killer.

It was sort of amazing, he thought as he dug the nub of his bitten thumbnail into the crack to chip the blood out. This had been inside a living creature just a few days ago. The dragon was long gone now, and somehow its blood was still resting on his blade. It felt like a lie, when he hadn’t used the blade to _kill_ the dragon.

Hiccup chuckled, amused that this had been the thing to make him stop and think. The dragon’s skull was being sun-bleached for mounting in the Great Hall. Its teeth were around his neck and its hide was on his feet but somehow it was the blood that made him think _wow, this thing was alive and I killed it._

After a moment of pause, Hiccup breathed and pulled out a stick of charcoal. He fumbled with sharpening it, something that rarely happened, and wondered if he was really so hopeless that he couldn’t even use a knife properly on _charcoal._ The specks of black landed all over his sketchbook and he blew them away before setting his charcoal down and wondering how to start.

“The head, I guess,” he mumbled. That would be easy, since there was a giant Night Fury skull sitting in the middle of the village. Deciding to aim for a top-down view, Hiccup drew in the blunt shape of the dragon’s skull. It had spines, that he remembered. _How many?_ He drew a few in. _Six,_ he decided.

The dragon’s body had been long, he remembered, and its wings had seemed huge. _Even marred and torn by the trees and the trap._ He drew in a vague shape and gave it somewhat batlike wings, though he couldn’t remember how many rays they had.

And then he was at a loss.

When he’d told Fishlegs he would never forget what the Night Fury looked like, he’d _meant_ it. His emotions had run so high in the time he saw it that the dragon was burned into his mind’s eye. But what he remembered was vague. A black dragon, smooth, quadrupedal. He thought maybe it had ears, but dragons didn’t usually have ears. He drew in some shapes, erased them. Drew, erased. There was _something_ on the head. Were there flaps? That sounded right, but how many? And the spines, did they continue down the dragon’s back? Did they get larger or smaller? And did it have tailfins? Did it have a skirt?

As he drew, Hiccup came to realize that while the moments he’d seen it were seared into his memory, he simply hadn’t spent enough time around the dragon to remember _what_ it looked like. He would draw something, wonder if it looked right, and smudge it out, redraw it, smudge it out, until his fist was black and charcoal was permanently rubbed into his page.

“Ugghh _hhhhh!”_ He grunt-shouted, scribbling his drawing out so hard the charcoal snapped. The frustration of failing in the arena _again,_ of proving everyone who believed in him wrong, of killing a dragon and _forgetting what it looked like,_ escaped in a sound loud enough that it sent birds fleeing from the treetops. The more he tried to remember the dragon’s corpse, the more muddled the details became, until the Night Fury was, as it always had been, an ominous and dreadful black silhouette, shapeless and featureless. “Useless. Fucking—” he chucked his charcoal across the clearing and it shattered against the bloody shadow in the center. “Useless!” He clenched his fists in his hair and bent his head over the ruined page, squeezing his eyes shut against threatening tears.

His dad had been wrong. He couldn’t be less equipped for this.

Astrid and Snotlout were right.

_Nothing._

_Useless._

_ Nothing _ _without a crazy idea to hide behind._

Hiccup slowly raised his head. That might be it! Astrid had, of course, been referring to the Mangler, but who was to say that those were the only ideas he was good at? They didn’t even need to be crazy—not that the Mangler had been, it had been very well-planned and had years of engineering knowledge behind it—to work.

He’d soundly shown that he wouldn’t be striking any dragons down anytime soon. But he could do something he had seen glimmers of in Astrid and little to no sign of in the others. He could _strategize._

***

“Today is about teamwork,” Gobber announced from…somewhere, obscured as he was by the great rolling clouds of Zippleback gas which filled the arena. “Work together and you might survive.”

As he surveyed the scene before him, Hiccup felt a little jab of apprehension. He’d known in the back of his mind that in order to do well, he would need the help of someone who could fight properly, but hearing the words aloud made him realize what exactly that _meant._ He had to _lead._

“Now, a wet dragon head can't light its fire,” Gobber continued as an ominous slithery sound whipped through the arena. “The Hideous Zippleback is extra tricky. One head breathes gas, the other head lights it. Your job is to know which is which.”

Hiccup shifted, feeling his back slide against Fishlegs’ broad frame. They were back to back, each holding a bucket of water which Gobber had until this moment absolutely _refused_ to reveal the purpose of.

Fishlegs was, as usual, muttering to himself. “Razor sharp serrated teeth that inject venom for pre-digestion. Prefers ambush attack, crushing its victims in its—”

“Will you _stop that?”_ Hiccup snapped, tension wracking his frame. They were, of course, enveloped in explosive gas. Even more frightening was the fact that he was probably about to make a giant fool of himself. Okay. Now was the time to speak up, now was the time to take control…

“There!” Snotlout shouted from somewhere in the fog, and Hiccup cringed at the sound of water hitting the dirt.

“Hey!” Astrid’s voice came from the same direction.

“It’s _us,_ idiots,” Ruffnut cried.

“Your butts are getting bigger,” Tuff laughed. “We thought you were a dragon.”

“Not that there’s anything _wrong_ with a dragonesque figure,” Snotlout wheedled, then cried out in pain at the sound of a fist hitting something meaty.

Okay. Okay.

“Okay?” Hiccup’s voice cracked. “Guys, can we just…nobody else throw your water for a second.”

“Oh, and you’re the Chief of Water?” Snotlout shot back, sounding like he was holding his nose.

“I’m just trying that teamwork thing out,” Hiccup’s voice quavered. “We’re in an arena full of explosive gas, we can’t see anything, and we’ve lost a third of the only thing that can save us right now.” Very eloquent, excellent work. “I think, maybe, um. We should go into this with a plan.”

“Oh, we’re already _in_ it,” Astrid said darkly.

“Fishlegs, which head is which?” Hiccup asked, loudly enough that everyone else could hear.

“Oh, um, the left head produces the gas and the right one lights it.”

“Our left or its left?” Hiccup pressed.

“Oh…uh, well, if I’m facing the book,” Fishlegs muttered to himself. “Its left.” He sounded less than certain, but it was all Hiccup had to work with.

“Okay. We wet the head on the right.”

“We can’t _see_ the heads, genius,” Snotlout said imperiously.

“So we draw it close to us.” Hiccup paused for a moment, thinking. “Snotlout and Tuffnut, you don’t have water anymore, but you can make noise. Could you get behind the dragon and distract it as soon as anyone needs help?”

“Okay, sure,” Tuffnut agreed. “Where’s its butt?”

“Find it,” Ruffnut drawled.

“Look out!” Astrid cried suddenly. A _crash_ and a _splash_ later, Hiccup was shifting anxiously.

“Guys, what happened?”

“The dragon tripped us with its tail,” Astrid stormed.

“Our water is gone,” Ruff added.

“If its tail is there then it’s probably facing me and Fishlegs,” Hiccup realized aloud. Things were happening too quickly to mourn the loss of two more buckets of water. “Astrid and Ruffnut, can you come this way? We need to draw it toward us.” He swallowed hard. If this failed, it was going to _hurt._

Fishlegs whined anxiously. Moments later, Astrid and Ruffnut were within sight.

“Time for noise,” Hiccup decided, then unleashed what was supposed to be a war cry but was actually, he realized, a totally ridiculous squeaky holler.

“If I just had my axe I could take the heads off and be done!” Astrid shouted, pounding her fist against her empty bucket. Fishlegs squealed nervously and Ruffnut began what Hiccup could only describe as a very stompy rain dance. A rumble resonated through the fog and the sound of heavy footsteps began to draw closer.

“That got its attention,” Fishlegs whimpered.

Drawn by the obnoxious noise, two round green heads slithered out of the verdant gas. _Head on the right, head on the right—_ Hiccup straightened his arms so fast his elbows locked painfully, tossing his water straight up into the air. The dragon recoiled out of the way, bulbous yellow eyes flashing, and the water _slap-plattered_ to the ground uselessly.

 _“Hiccup!”_ Astrid cried indignantly.

After getting over the crushing embarrassment, Hiccup gathered himself and placed a grounding hand on Fishlegs’ arm. “It’s okay,” he panted. “We’ve still got one bucket left. We need to get its head toward the ground, we need…uh, we need to bait it,” Hiccup trailed off, realizing what a dumb idea that was. _Razor sharp serrated venomous teeth._

“I volunteer!” Ruffnut shouted immediately, gas-obscured silhouette shooting a hand into the air.

“Aw, no _fair!”_ Tuff’s voice came from across the arena. Fishlegs, Hiccup and Astrid shushed him loudly. They had the Zippleback right where they wanted it and couldn’t risk distracting it.

Ruffnut, it seemed, had found her true calling. She was brazenly marching up to stand in front of the dragon. “Come and get it, fish breath! Or…” she paused. “There’s two of you. Fish and Breath, give me all you’ve got!” She raised her fists and adopted a fighting posture.

Fish and Breath made a curious noise and snaked around to investigate the girl. The left head wound around her right side, looking up at her suspiciously, while the other loomed over her and looked down its muzzle. Ruff edged toward the right head tauntingly and it lowered slightly to smell her. Hiccup was fairly certain in that moment that he had condemned his friend to death. Except the dragon wasn’t taking her head off. It stayed close, smelling and threatening, but it didn’t make any move to hurt her. She sidled away and the head followed, growing closer and closer to the ground as it stretched away from the body; the other head joined as well and soon a silent Ruffnut had four sharp eyes focused directly on her.

“Fishlegs!” Hiccup hissed, unsure how long Ruffnut’s luck could last. “Go around and douse it now!”

Fishlegs whined and shifted, the precious water in his bucket sloshing dangerously. “I—I, I don’t think I can!”

“Oh, for Thor’s sake,” Tuffnut growled, sounding secretly delighted. “ _I’ll_ do it.” He materialized beside Fishlegs and Hiccup to wrench the bucket away. Then he slunk around the side, going wide so as not to draw the dragon’s attention (as if that was a concern, with how thoroughly it seemed to enjoy Ruffnut’s smell). With years of practiced precision, he snuck soundlessly up just behind the dragon’s heads.

“How did he—” Fishlegs started.

“Best not to question it,” Hiccup decided. For whatever reason, Tuff was on _this_ side of the dragon now.

And then, as if it was the easiest thing in the world, he tossed the water, managing to douse both heads _and_ his sister.

“Hey!” Ruffnut jerked and shouted, breaking the tense silence which had filled the ring. The Zippleback, startled, snapped its jaws at her.

“Tuff, grab it!” Hiccup shouted. Tuffnut vaulted impressively up onto the dragon’s right head, wrapping his arms as far around its jaw as they could go. When the left head reared up, jaws open wide and threatening, Ruffnut leaped to his rescue, grabbing it by the horns and pulling it down. The right head tried in vain to spark, but it was all wet and had a maniacal twin holding its mouth shut. The left head reared and thrashed, but Ruffnut held on tight with one hand and used the other to take her helmet off and bash it in the face.

Just like that, the dragon wheeled and began to retreat. The twins, sensing it was time, let go and _flumped_ to the ground. The sound of the dragon’s pen slamming shut filled the arena as the gas, without its source, finally began to clear.

“Ruffnut and Tuffnut, _excellent_ work!” Gobber crowed. As he hobbled closer they could see his arms raised in celebration. “And Hiccup, _fantastic!”_ He smacked his small apprentice on the back, sending him sprawling to the ground. “Eh, sorry,” he offered his hook to help him back up, then dusted him off and looked him over, eyes brimming with pride. “Just the leader yer father was!” He cuffed Hiccup gently around the head. “Just wait til’ he hears about this!”

Hiccup felt like he could burst from pride and excitement, but noticed Ruffnut and Tuffnut a few feet away, climbing to their feet and groaning.

“Are you guys okay?” Hiccup asked, trotting over to offer Ruffnut a hand. “That was so… _crazy,_ I—I can’t believe that actually worked!”

“That was so _cool!”_ Ruffnut yowled as soon as she’d reached her feet. “Did you _see_ how close that thing got to taking my head off? _Man,_ Hiccup, that plan _ruled!”_

“That dragon _totally_ tried to venom me,” Tuffnut added in awe. “Dude, did you see me holding its mouth? Like—sis, we’re so _badass!”_ They slammed their heads together and Ruffnut pulled away with a cry, remembering suddenly that she wasn’t wearing a helmet.

“You shouldn’ta put it away, Gobber, we could’ve killed it!” Ruffnut boasted as they started to follow their instructor toward the exit.

“It could have killed _you,”_ Astrid retorted, her own voice full of venom. “You didn’t have weapons.”

Tuffnut pointed excitedly to his twin’s bruising head.

“Oh my _Thor,_ Hiccup, that was so…!” Fishlegs squealed, making excited fists in front of his chest. Then, all at once, his excitement deflated. “I’m sorry I was so useless.”

“You were great,” Hiccup assured him with a pat on the back, high on the rush of pride and adrenaline and more confident than usual. “Nobody else would have known which head was which!”

“But I got both heads anyway,” Tuffnut argued, and Gobber guffawed loudly.

“True.”

Hiccup threw a grin over his shoulder at the boy and paused. Behind Tuffnut he could see Astrid and Snotlout marching along in thunderous silence, eyes trained squarely on him. When Hiccup noticed them Snotlout wrinkled his aggravated nose and Astrid tossed her head. He realized they were upset they hadn’t been more instrumental in their victory.

Surprisingly, he couldn’t bring himself to care.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Honestly I felt like there was a dip in chapter quality for a little bit between the first two and this one but I. LOVE. THIS CHAPTER. What else can I say except we're about to veer hard into plot divergence
> 
> If you read this far and enjoyed, consider leaving me kudos/comments to let me know! 
> 
> Thanks so much for reading!


	7. Hiccup Leads the Way

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh hey guess what's back it's this horrible thing.
> 
> Major MAJOR warning for this chapter:  
> \- GRAPHIC violence against and death of an animal. Not a major character but it's bad like I had trouble writing it. Be careful.

After the fight with the Hideous Zippleback, Hiccup’s luck took a sharp turn toward the better. The weeks that followed were full of physical training sessions in which he consistently improved, punctuated by arena battles in which he led his peers to victory.

Hiccup, the twins and Fishlegs had defeated the Gronckle again by drawing its attention with strategic noise, pulling it from person to person into smaller and lower spirals until it rammed into the ground and lay there, dazed.

They had confused the Nadder by ducking to and fro behind obstacles, distracting it until Ruffnut was able to slip into its blind spot and daze it with the butt of her axe. Astrid and Snotlout had been chasing and dodging with it in the open, and they’d stopped and dropped their weapons in frustration when they saw it defeated.

They beat the Gronckle _again._ This time Tuffnut sprinted across the ring toward its pen while Hiccup and Fishlegs held the door open. He’d ducked away at the last minute but the Gronckle had built up too much speed to follow, careening into the pen. They slammed the doors shut behind it and, to everyone’s surprise, Snotlout had pulled the lever to slot the lock into place.

When Gobber had given them a Terrible Terror, they’d simply corralled and herded it with their shields until it was trapped in the center of the arena and Fishlegs grabbed it by the muzzle, careful to avoid being bitten.

The second Zippleback fight had begun like the first, but the dragon had learned their game. Hiccup had been forced to invent a new plan on the fly; after a few failed ideas, what worked was Ruffnut and Tuffnut running in opposite directions and drawing the heads apart before Snotlout shouted from directly below the dragon, drawing its attention and causing the heads to snap back and ram into each other.

Hiccup’s success hadn’t escaped the villagers’ notice. While he hadn’t been directly responsible for any of the dragons’ defeat, everyone knew the strategies were his. Those who had placed bets were having a hard time deciding who was winning, except that it wasn’t Astrid, who refused to participate. Stubbornness issues.

And while whispers and mutters abounded in the shadows that this was _cheating,_ that he was _using_ his friends as _pawns,_ most of the attention was positive. Hiccup had started receiving requests for Mangler blueprints so everyone could harness the power that had brought down a Night Fury. He’d been openly listened to in a council meeting about building houses in more pragmatic locations. He’d been asked, for the first time in his life, to go wild and design something that would ‘blow Gobber’s sock off.’ So Berk, with three Manglers and counting and a veritable maze of new buildings, began to feel that it would be okay.

The dragons, sensing this, attacked.

“Dragons incoming from the south!”

Hiccup stumbled out of bed and to his feet as the crier jogged past. He shook his head, trying to clear some of the grogginess out.

“Dragons incoming from the south!” the crier called again, voice further away as she continued her route through the village.

“Oh, fantastic,” Hiccup muttered. He tossed his nightclothes out of the way and struggled into his tunic and gear. He’d hoped to save time by dressing in the dark, but trying to wrangle his clothes on without candlelight caused more harm than good. His vest caught on his belt buckle and then his left foot nearly refused to go into the boot and he spent several moments casting around for his helmet before he caught its glint in the corner of his eye. By the time he’d grabbed his axe and rushed out the door, Gobber was already waiting.

“How close are they?” Hiccup asked, taking a moment to marvel at the fact that he wasn’t out of breath after running down the stairs.

“We have minutes,” Gobber replied, glancing over his shoulder.

“Oh, okay, minutes. Okay.” Hiccup wrung his hands. “Everyone’s at their posts already? You need me in the forge?”

“We’ll be ready when they come.” Gobber grasped Hiccup’s shoulder in his meaty hand and steered him roughly toward the village center. “Yer agemates are on buckets and I have the forge handled. Ye’ll be more use mannin’ one of yer weapons.”

Hiccup’s heart leaped and he struggled to focus. There would be time for these feelings later.

“Which ones are free?”

“Take the one over the docks.” Gobber indicated the cliff from which Hiccup had shot the Night Fury; it was at the end of a steep path, connected to the main road system by a perilously high wooden walkway. A difficult run, but Gobber clearly thought he was up to it.

“Okay.” Hiccup ducked away and took off before doubling back. “Thank you!” Then he ran off toward the Mangler, reveling in the speed he could build up in just a few moments.

Gobber was letting him man one of the Manglers. _Him._ As the first blasts and shouts began to echo through the village, Hiccup urged his feet to fly faster, feeling nearly weightless. He flew over the land, heart beating out fear as the attack began but leaping with the joyful thought that _they needed him._ He ducked and weaved between Vikings and dragons locked in combat, watching where he stepped to avoid slipping in gore or running through flames.

“Hey, Hiccup!” Tuffnut’s voice flickered past as Hiccup neared his destination. He gestured over his shoulder in what he hoped looked like a greeting before pounding onto the walkway, footsteps thudding dully over the dense wood. The dragons were fully upon the village, swarms of wings and bursts of fire flickering below him as he skidded to a halt next to the already-loaded Mangler.

Hiccup took a few heaving breaths to clear his head before crouching and looking to the sky. Though the battle was raging in full force, dragons were still coming in overhead. He took a moment to steel himself, hoping he wouldn’t miss, and focused on what looked like a Nadder.

Something exploded into flames nearby.

Hiccup flinched briefly before setting his gaze on the Nadder again. It wasn’t worth paying attention to, one of his friends would come put it out. “Okay. Okay.” He was still panting from his run and he was sure that if he wasn’t gripping the weapon’s handles his hands would be shaking. He breathed. Breathed. The sounds of the battle faded into nothing and there was only the sky.

“Okay! Now!” He forced his body into action, triggering the Mangler’s release and jolting as it kicked back. He couldn’t see the trap in the dark but heard the _thwip thwip thwip_ as it spiraled toward its target.

Moments passed.

“Dammit, okay.” Hiccup took two deep breaths and clenched his fists so tight his nails dug into his palms. He’d missed, but that was alright. He had more traps, he just had to pick one up and set the mechanism, just as he’d demonstrated for the village.

“Ah, ah, get--” He grunted, struggling with the tangle of ropes on the ground. “Come _here!”_ a trap came free with his tug and he fed it into the Mangler, hooking one end through the catapult and pulling it through. Now to hook it back to create the right tension…

The iron balls at the end of the rope clinked against the grounding loop uselessly as Hiccup floundered to find it in the darkness. “Stupid! This…was a _stupid_ design.” The Mangler replied with a _clink clink thump_ as he frantically struggled with the mechanism.

“What are you _doing?”_

It was Astrid.

“Trying to, _ugh,_ the stupid thing won’t reload!” He needed to slow down. He reached one hand up into the Mangler’s bulky body and felt around until found the loop. “There it is,” he muttered, pulling the rope through and then painstakingly setting the mechanism. He grunted as he tugged back hard, winding the spring coil as tight as he could before carefully setting the trap through the second grounding loop.

“You _built_ it!”

Hiccup aimed the Mangler toward the sky and picked out a target, a bulky Gronckle flying dark against the stars. He sized it up for a moment or two, judging its speed and its height and adjusting accordingly, then triggered the release.

_Thwip thwip thwip,_ the trap hurtled toward its target as Hiccup waited with bated breath. A guttural yowl echoed through the sky as the dragon’s form changed trajectory, hurtling toward…the exact spot Hiccup was sitting.

_“Move!”_ Astrid grabbed him by the scruff of his vest and threw him aside just before the Gronckle plowed into the Mangler. There was a sound of shattering wood and the screech of rending metal as it was destroyed, but the dragon skidded right through, planting a deep furrow in the ground.

Hiccup remained on his hands and knees for a moment, head spinning. Astrid was standing beside him and the dragon was thrashing around nearby, trapped. He leaped to his feet with a yowl. “Yes! _Ow!”_

Astrid had hit him in the gut with the butt of her axe. _Hard._

“What was tha—” he paused as she gestured to the Gronckle, which was still barking and growling and struggling and very clearly alive. Astrid moved toward it and Hiccup followed.

A closer view of the dragon revealed that its wings and one leg were bound tightly to its body; the moonlight revealed Hiccup’s trap winding hopelessly tight around them. The enraged creature was foaming at the mouth, scrabbling at the dirt with three stumpy legs in a desperate attempt to stand. Its body was too bulky and unbalanced, however, and all it managed to do was rotate in circles, digging itself deeper and deeper into the marred soil. It didn’t even notice Hiccup and Astrid as they approached.

“Gods,” Hiccup muttered. A strange desperate gurgling sound was coming from the animal’s throat. They needed to kill it, they needed—he was fumbling for a weapon when Astrid plunged forward suddenly, swinging her axe in a tight arc over her head and burying it in the dragon’s huge throat. The sound was like an axe lodging into wood, and for a moment he thought it was over—but to Hiccup’s horror, the dragon didn’t die. Gronckles were heavily armored, he knew, thick skin and heavy flesh protecting all their vital organs, but he’d never seen a battle end like _this._ Astrid, unpracticed as she was, was forced to hack again and again at the struggling animal’s throat as it grew weaker and weaker and, finally, died.

Hiccup released a breath, a sigh of what he realized was _relief,_ while Astrid knelt down and muttered something to herself.

“What’s that?” Hiccup asked, edging closer to the cascade of dragon blood soaking the ground.

“I _did_ it,” Astrid repeated, louder. When she looked up she was radiant and proud and _glowing_ and Hiccup, in spite of everything, felt his heart give a little kick. “I killed a dragon!” She leaped to her feet and grabbed his shoulders, shaking him hard once. _“I killed it!_ And you trapped it, oh my _Gods,_ that was amazing!” She grinned and looked away briefly, eyes flashing as her fists did an excited little dance in front of her chest.

“It was,” Hiccup realized, then grinned.

“Gobber’s going to be so _impressed,”_ Astrid whispered, echoing Hiccup’s thoughts. She reeled back and punched him in the arm, but it wasn’t aggressive. He thought that it might have even been _friendly._

They both jumped as a ball of fire hurtled over their heads and toward the village.

“I’m supposed to be on fire duty,” Astrid realized, snapping out of her euphoria. She ducked away, scooped up her bucket and ran down to the well without another word.

Hiccup’s knees faltered; for a moment he was worried they’d give out, but he recovered. He stared at the Gronckle, expecting it to lurch and come alive and fly away unharmed. It didn’t, and he stood there by himself, half-aware of the dragons flying to and from the island, half-aware of the battle raging behind him.

It took only an instant for him to remember that he, too, had a job to do. He shook his head and jogged over to the Mangler, minding the furrow in the soil.

“Oh, that is _destroyed.”_ Hiccup’s hands dropped uselessly to his sides as he took in the wreckage that had been his beautiful invention. There was absolutely no saving it. There was Mangler scattered across the ground at his feet. There was Mangler sprawled five feet away. Hiccup was pretty sure there was Mangler stuck in a nearby tree.

He wondered if Gobber needed help in the forge.

He turned on his heel and started after Astrid, veering wide around the leaking Gronckle carcass. He didn’t pause to survey the village, but turned his head to scout out the safest route to the forge. Specks of glowing torches and beacons of dragonfire marched across the night-blue backdrop of the village, flickering and flashing with the Vikings and dragons locked in combat.

Something was wrong.

Hiccup stumbled to a halt, eyes trained on the village below. The northern end of the village, to his right, seemed to be faring fine. Even from this distance he could hear Gobber barking orders to the Vikings furthest north, and he watched as dragons were beaten back by the strategy and force of the Vikings who remained in the village. To the south, however, on the other side of the walkway, things were not going so well. The light radiating from a trio of Monstrous Nightmares was almost blinding, and it was only growing brighter as they brushed up against buildings and trees and spread their consuming flames across homes where families could be hiding. There were Vikings trying to fight back, but there looked to be few, and the Nightmares seemed largely unconcerned with their presence.

If Stoick had been there, this wouldn’t have been a problem. Usually he covered one end of the island while Gobber monitored what was out of his view. Usually someone was keeping watch; usually someone was moving across sightlines to make sure the battle was balanced. Hiccup watched, a bit horrified, as Astrid sprinted under the walkway with a bucket. Snotlout was trailing her, but that was it; they would be nowhere near enough force to stop the fire or fight the dragons. He hoped they wouldn’t _try._

“Oh man,” Hiccup bounced a little, wasted adrenaline reminding him he should be running. He eventually gave in, letting gravity carry him down the hill while his mind raced as fast as his feet. Stoick had taken most of the fighting force with him; they had limited manpower. How many Vikings would it take to fight off three Nightmares? Could they possibly bring enough water to save the entire south end of the village from destruction?

Hiccup barreled into the center of the village and slid clumsily to a halt by the well. Gobber and a sizeable band of Vikings were fighting a band five mid-size dragons.

“I need everyone to listen to me!” Hiccup shouted, barely having time to be anxious about giving orders. “We need to move to the south end of the village!” His lungs were burning; he hadn’t caught his breath after the run, and the smoke and gas from dragons flaming had laid a fine layer of smog over everything.

Heads turned, but axes and hammers didn’t stop pounding against leathery flesh. There were some questioning sounds and some battle cries, and business continued as usual.

“There are three Nightmares upwind. They’re setting everything on fire. I need everyone to get water and follow me.” Hiccup would have been surprised if _one_ person had listened to him, but at his order nearly all the Vikings leaped into action, swarming the well.

“There aren’t enough buckets!” A Thorston shouted, playing tug-of-war with her next-door neighbor.

“Find more! Get a pot!” Hiccup urged. She nodded briskly and dashed into the nearest house.

“I’ve got good cookware!” Gobber announced, raising his hand, a grinning beacon amid the flurry of activity. A Hobgobbler shot at him and he hammered it in the face, sending it reeling away.

“Not you, Gobber, stay here. Keep some fighters with you.” Gobber looked like he wanted to argue, but decided against it. “How many do you need?”

Gobber cast around for a moment, taking note of the Vikings still locked in combat. “This’ll do,” he decided. Hiccup nodded and turned toward the forge with racing thoughts, hoping to find some kind of container. A few barrels of water sat beside the forge, ready to cool red-hot metal. Too heavy. A smaller bucket sat beside the fire, prepared to douse embers at the end of the night. Hiccup heaved it up and did a heavy sort of stumble back outside. He stared across the village to where he could see the fuzzy-bright glow of fire beginning to rise and took a deep breath before setting off as fast as he could with the heavy bucket in tow.

“Be careful, lad!” Gobber shouted after him.

After a numbingly slow, sloshy trot across the village, Hiccup came upon the site of what was already a full-fledged defense against the Monstrous Nightmares. Astrid, firelight reflecting off her hair like molten gold, was ducking around one of them with her axe; each time she went in for a hit, a dragon would try to roast her from behind. A few older warriors were landing hits on one of the dragons, but they too were being driven off by flames from the others. Everyone else was throwing water on the flaming houses; it barely made a dent, and each time they put a building out a Nightmare would just brush against something else. There clearly weren’t enough people for either task, and Hiccup’s stomach sank.

A new wave of Vikings entered the scene with refreshed buckets. They headed stalwartly toward the fires, unintimidated by the seemingly impossible task before them, and Hiccup made a decision.

“Not on the fires!” he ordered brazenly. He got a few confused glances for that, which was fair. If this _didn’t_ work, there would be Hel to pay. “We need to drive the dragons off first, or they’ll just keep lighting things up. Throw it on them, try to put them out!”

Again, to his surprise, the villagers obeyed without another thought. They rerouted immediately, buckets swinging. The Nightmares reeled a little bit at the sight of the reinforcements.

“Go around back and throw water on the dragons!” Hiccup told Snotlout, who had arrived from the north square with a new bucket. Having _one well_ was very inconvenient. They would have to remedy that. Snotlout obeyed immediately.

Hiccup himself forged straight into the heat radiating off the Nightmares. They were huge, all full-grown and clearly veterans at fighting humans. Vikings were ducking and dodging around them, splashing water anywhere they could—and for a moment, it appeared to be working. A Viking would rush into a blind spot and fling water at the dragon, dousing some of its fire. Hiccup’s spirits rose. Maybe they _could_ do this.

To his horror, however, the dragons were reigniting.

“Memo to Gobber,” Hiccup muttered. “A wet _Nightmare_ apparently _can_ light its fire.” But he kept running toward the dragons, now with no real idea what he was going to do when he reached them. He stopped under the nearest towering neck. For a moment he stood, small and inconsequential, under the dragon’s giant head, which swung around as the dragon tracked its assailants. Then it shifted, teeth swinging away, and two bulbous eyes came to rest on Hiccup’s trembling form.

This had been a bad idea.

The dragon’s head swiveled and slithered toward the ground, tilting side to side as the Nightmare sized up its tiny prey. Hiccup froze as the its head drew level with his own, acrid smoke curling up from its nostrils and making him wrinkle his nose. Then the dragon unhinged its jaw like a furnace and within moments Hiccup was staring into the gaseous, fiery maw of his demise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This and the next chapter were one chapter in my plan but oops it got long. This was the best place to cut it off. That's what professional writers do right they see their chapters exceed 3500 words and just stop writing that's totally normal right
> 
> Anyway here we are starting to build some stakes. Look at it go, my atrocity of a fic is going in a direction, woohoo
> 
> Seriously though if you've stuck through this far thanks a BUNCH!!!! Love you guys. Be safe and be careful :)


	8. Hiccup Measures Up

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This Shit Again
> 
> I'm seriously shocked that I've forged this far through the fic and am beginning to really hope that I'll hold out and finish it. My plan tells me we're about halfway through, and standard story structure is wondering what the hell I'm doing. I guess I'm adhering roughly to the "rules." It's just for fun.
> 
> Content warnings:  
> \- Nothing any worse than you've seen before. The dead Gronckle gets described but no graphic violence.  
> \- Fire? Is that a trigger?  
> \- Dubious descriptions of physical and emotional stress

Hiccup froze, watching in horrified awe as gas surged from the Nightmare’s throat, glowing a bit with heat-light as the dragon prepared to roast him alive. The heat from a Nightmare’s fire was worse than that from a Gronckle; it was more focused and intense, enough so that after a few moments of blistering heat, Hiccup’s face just felt cold. His clothes were heating up and trapping the warmth close to his body and it felt as though they could burst into flame any moment.

For the second time, Hiccup stared down a dragon’s throat and prepared to die. He was back in the ring with the Gronckle, frozen and helpless in the face of his death. The battle cries of his village and the shrieks of dragons faded into the background as all his senses focused inward. He could feel the bucket heavy in his arms, his feet firm on the ground. His heartbeat roared in his ears and his mind raced, weighing the options: run, or attack?

The crackle of a spark sounded in the dragon’s gullet and a sudden, unbidden confidence surged through Hiccup. This wasn’t the Gronckle. He’d just helped _kill_ a Gronckle. He had experience now. The villagers were taking orders from him. He had experience and he had _control._

He reeled back and swung his arms as hard as he could, nearly throwing himself in a circle with the effort of dousing the flames in the Nightmare’s throat. The dragon coughed and gasped and Hiccup scrambled away from the boiling water and steam it spewed. Startled, the Nightmare clapped its jaws shut and steam began to rise from its nostrils. It shook its head and hacked again, cross-eyed and almost comically confused.

Reflecting fire like a streak of sunset, Astrid leaped into view, giving the dragon a solid _whack_ in the face with the flat of her axe. It staggered out of the way before she could do any worse damage, but after a worryingly stumbly takeoff it shuddered into the air and returned to the darkness, disoriented and clumsy as a newborn Gronckle.

Hiccup turned shakily toward Astrid, only to find her already gone. He scanned the flaming battlefield until he spotted her again, locked in combat with the other full-grown Nightmare. Hiccup’s heart did a terrified little jolt in his chest as the dragon’s open jaws swung toward her, but a moment later she was out of the way.

“They can’t light if you throw water down their throats!” Hiccup called, wondering if he could be heard over the roar of the fire. One or two Vikings perked up and hoisted their buckets closer, repositioning themselves to face the dragons straight-on. Hiccup hoped he hadn’t just sent them to their doom.

He didn’t have much time to worry about that, however; they’d ignored the flames for far too long, the few moments of leeway having allowed them to lick their way even further into the village. The fire was so big now, there was no way they could stop it with buckets. Visions clouded his mind, of Berk shrouded in flames, their winter supplies charred and smoldering and their shelters burnt to the ground. His people burning or freezing or starving to death. Why did they make their houses out of wood? How stupid was that, they sat in the sun and dried out and became literally the perfect fuel for the _one enemy they had to worry about—_

“It wouldn’t light if it wasn’t so dry,” Hiccup mumbled. He noted briefly that the Vikings were beating the Nightmares back easily now that there were fewer to contend with. The dragons were no longer his concern.

As the smallest Nightmare swerved away despondently, Hiccup cupped his hands around his mouth. “We need to stop the fire from spreading!” he shouted, voice cracking with effort. “Go get water! Wet the houses downwind! We can’t let it reach the storehouse!”

“Aye, Chief!” In the herd of Vikings that trampled by, he didn’t catch who said it. The words caught him off guard; there was no irony behind them. It was a soldier’s honest response to his command.

He looked back to where the final Nightmare was facing off with a couple of burly women and a gleeful Astrid. Though the more trained warriors were landing better hits, Astrid had a maniacal light in her eyes that Hiccup could read plain as day: _I’m handling this._ Confident that she was right, Hiccup hoisted his bucket and sprinted toward the well, allowing his trained feet to carry him as swiftly as possible to…

Another hangup.

Having one well in the middle of a flaming village was literally the dumbest idea in the world and the next chance he got Hiccup was going to come up with something better. The dragons this side of the island had been beaten back, but nobody was celebrating the victory. Instead, practically every Viking in Berk was milling around the well, looking twitchy and fidgety as someone painstakingly drew up a bucket. This was going to take too long.

He scanned the crowd briefly and laid his eyes on Gobber, hastening toward his mentor. He could feel himself beginning to shake with nervous energy, coming off the high of fighting the Nightmare. Gobber looked pleasantly surprised to see Hiccup as he sprinted over.

“We need to go faster,” Hiccup gasped, his lungs trying to force air _in_ faster than he could spit the words out. “We need more water.” He bent over just for a moment, hands on his knees, and Gobber dragged him back upright with a tight hold on his vest.

“Grab the barrels from the forge!” Gobber shouted, raising his voice to carry to the crowd. A spark of hope lit in Hiccup’s chest. He hadn’t had much faith in the small buckets, but _that much_ water at once might give them a chance.

“When you get them, dump them on the nearest unlit houses!” Hiccup added. It pained him to condemn the burning homes to destruction, but their only hope was to stop the fire before it got any further out of control. “Then work back toward the closest burning ones!”

Initially, there was a rush for the forge as everybody decided that _they_ would be the one to carry the bucket. Eventually about four people, Ruffnut and Tuffnut included, Hiccup noted, separated themselves from the shouting throng and headed inside. The rest returned to wait around the well for water to be doled out, filling their buckets and returning to the site of the fire one by one. Gobber vanished quickly, taking over the operation of the well’s pulley, and Hiccup resigned himself to wait in line, hopping from foot to foot and casting anxious glances toward the conflagration.

By the time Hiccup made it back to the site of the fire, the flames were shrinking. The groups with the barrels had been smart enough to climb above the houses and douse them from the top, successfully saving any more from lighting. Now, bucket by bucket, the remaining wall of fire was turning back into soggy, charred buildings.

Hiccup let himself take a breath as he watched the flames dwindle into nonexistence without a source of fresh fuel. The chill of night air fell back over the village and all around him, feeling impossibly cold on his heated skin. Finally, the warriors began to relax.

Someone smacked Hiccup on the back, making him squeak as the last fizzles of adrenaline streaked through his blood.

“Yer a right young Stoick, now, arentcha’ lad?” Gobber grinned, warm voice an odd contrast to the sizzling and dripping of drenched charcoal. Hiccup looked into his mentor’s crinkling eyes, lit up with moonlight rather than firelight, and took a deep, shaky breath. He laughed a little nervously, then a little hysterically, then maybe in a way that sounded a little bit like crying as he turned and pressed himself against Gobber’s bulky, musky frame, resting his forehead against leather armor and realizing that they’d survived.

“Ah, now, there,” Gobber coughed, tense. Then he brought his arms tight around Hiccup’s narrow shoulders, encasing him in familiarity and safety as he shuddered, trying to keep from sobbing out loud. “Ye did great. For a moment there I was real worried we wouldn’t beat ‘em off! Ye saved the day there, boy. You just wait ‘til yer father hears about _this.”_

Hiccup nodded, trying unsuccessfully to stave off a full-body shiver. How many times had he heard that? And how many of those times _hadn’t_ been a threat?

Familiar bootsteps pounded over and Hiccup nestled further into Gobber’s chest, embarrassed.

“Gobber!” Astrid cried, voice bright and pleased as if nothing had really happened. She pelted closer before her footsteps faltered and she lowered her voice. “Uh. A-are you okay?”

“Ah, yeah, m’fine,” Hiccup replied, probably completely inaudible. He tried to pull away without showing Astrid his tear-streaked face, rubbing a sleeve across his eyes in what he hoped looked like a casual gesture. “Yeah, I’m totally great and good. Super.” He blinked and opened his puffy eyes to grin at her. He was calming down now, felt a lot better. His body shuddered again.

Astrid held eye contact with him for a moment in a weird new way that conveyed trust and respect and concern. He wasn’t sure how he felt about it.

Then she remembered what she’d come here for. “Gobber!” Astrid shouted, bouncing on her toes. Hiccup couldn’t remember the last time she’d seemed so _young._

“Astrid!” Gobber returned brightly. Astrid blinked, surprised, before regaining control of the conversation.

“I killed a dragon!” She announced. Her eyes were wide and blue and she was grinning, with crooked teeth and her little freckled nose wrinkled—

Hiccup felt a little light-headed, like he could only focus on one thing at a time. His brain, of course, had chosen Astrid.

Gobber straightened and blinked, looking pleasantly shocked. “ _Did_ ye?”

Astrid nodded, braid wagging. “It’s a Gronckle, it’s up on the hill! Hiccup shot it down and I killed it!” Hiccup felt a little flutter as she said his name. The houses were still smoldering behind them. “Come see!” In her haste, she reached out and grabbed the blacksmith’s wrist, her two hands barely wrapping all the way around. Gobber laughed warmly and pulled away, placing his freed hand on her shoulder. He gave her a fond look, the one which made him seem so _parental._

“In a moment, lass, in a moment. We’ve got to make sure everyone is safe and accounted for.”

Astrid blinked, coming off the high as maturity settled back into her features. She took in the smoldering village as if for the first time, realization dawning, and concern flickered through her eyes.

“O-of course,” she stammered.

“Let’s get a look at everyone, then,” Gobber smiled soothingly, placing a hand on each teen’s back and guiding them along the path.

They made their way through skeletal homes, looking like brittle bones dropped into the bonfire and left to burn away. The battle had been bad, worse than usual, and there was a solemn flurry of activity as the villagers checked their flocks, their stores, their families. The Vikings were already gathering in the Meade Hall when they entered, conversing loudly.

Hiccup tried to make himself small, still rattled from the fight. The nervous energy which suffused the room did nothing to help, and after the cool darkness of outside the Meade Hall was enough to start him shivering all over again. Astrid, beside him, didn’t seem to feel the effects. She strode along proudly, braid thumping against her back, Gronckle blood still splattered over her face like war paint.

They reached the front of the hall and turned toward the Berkians that had stayed behind; they were women with families, mostly, some older and injured men or teens and children too young to fight at the nest. Their gazes bored holes in him as he stood before the crowd with Gobber and Astrid.

“Is everyone present?” Gobber shouted over the crowd. “Everyone and their families accounted for?”

No contradiction rose from the crowd and Hiccup felt a little tension drain out of him. He’d lost a few houses, but no lives. They could recover. They would have to.

“Who’s been injured?”

“Greta and Toenail,” someone shouted. “Gothi’s with them. Nothing serious.”

“We’ve lost half a head of sheep,” someone else interjected, and a shout of dismay rippled through the crowd.

“And five houses!” Someone else cried.

“We’ll not survive the winter,” a woman cried melodramatically, and a nearby mother shushed her, covering her young child’s ears. A chorus of voices burst out, agreeing and arguing and speculating about what could have been done.

“Ay!” Gobber shouted, a great, guttural yell which came straight from his belly. A hush fell over the room and Hiccup blinked, impressed. “We’re _alive,_ ain’t we? The chief and over half our fighters have gone. It couldn’t be helped.”

“Hiccup drove them off!” Someone optimistic added.

“That’s right!” Gobber latched onto that, slapping Hiccup on the back. He stumbled forward a few steps to compensate. “Our young heir led us to victory!”

“That’s worth a celebration,” someone decided, and as quickly as the mood had soured, the Vikings seemed to come around. A few pleased murmurs passed through the throng, and Hiccup looked out at his people, flickers of reflected torchlight catching his attention. He met someone’s eyes and glanced away quickly.

“If your house was destroyed, ye’ll stay here in the Hall,” Gobber ordered. “We’ll set about rebuilding as soon as tomorrow. It’s another chance to improve our structure!”

“Yeah!”

A cheer erupted at that, and Gobber nodded to the roiling crowd, grinning broadly.

“Now, if we might take our leave, these young dragon fighters have a dead Gronckle to show me.” Pride on the youths’ behalf saturated his voice and his great blocky chin raised a bit as he patted Hiccup on the back, encouraging him forward. They were going to leave, Hiccup realized in a daze, and allowed Gobber to lead him. Bloody, sooty hands reached toward him as he was ushered by, patting him on the back and punching him on the arm.

“There he is, the Night Fury killer!”

“Just like his father, I tol’ ye, he jus’ needed a few years to bloom!”

“Way to lead, son!”

“Got a Gronckle, did ye, Astrid?”

“Hiccup!”

He laughed a bit, cringing away from the attention. He was all nervous energy and frayed nerves, and the cheering and touching was wearing at him, the torches too bright and the attention too much. Getting outside was like a breath of air to a drowning man, and though the crowd was trickling out after them, the lack of confining walls made all the difference. The sun was edging into the sky, pink creeping up over the east end of the archipelago.

“Show me yer beastie, lass,” Gobber invited, and Astrid trotted ahead willingly. Hiccup followed, exhaustion dragging at his limbs as he listened to the chatter of the villagers around them. They were excited. Excited at his success, excited that the teens had evidently killed another dragon. Hiccup felt a surge of affection for his people, loud as they were; they’d listened to him, taking him at face value when he had needed their compliance.

“It’s here, Gobber,” Astrid announced, and Hiccup looked up to see her gesturing to the dead lump of the Gronckle. Hiccup followed Gobber as he stumped up the hill toward the dragon and drank in the sight of it, dead in the little dip it had dug in its attempts to right itself, surrounded by congealing blood. Hiccup looked at it briefly, then turned away with a surge of…something. He should be reveling in the victory, he reminded himself, not standing there all pathetic, shying away from his village’s praise and thinking about how much he wanted to go to sleep.

“A mess of a job ye did, alright, but it did the trick!” Gobber said, gaze sweeping over the Gronckle’s corpse. He smacked Astrid on the back (Hiccup was glad to see that even she staggered a little under the force). Gobber turned and looked over the villagers who had followed them up, gesturing to the dead beast. “An’ here’s to Astrid, the second of our youths to kill a dragon!”

The crowd cheered at that and Astrid raised her chin, puffing out her chest at the praise. Her eyes crinkled with self-satisfaction as she stepped up, placing one foot on the corpse.

“Yeah, Astrid!” Hiccup huffed a little, amused by Snotlout’s cheer, which rose far above the accolades from everyone else.

“An’ let’s not ferget the Night Fury Killer! Struck again, did ye?” Gobber made pointed eye contact with Hiccup and gestured for him to come forward. With a strange mix of weariness and pride, Hiccup complied. “Git up there an’ stake yer claim.” Gobber shoved Hiccup gently toward the kill.

Hiccup made hesitant eye contact with Astrid, who was standing on top of the Gronckle, towering above him. Her hair looked white against the pink of the sunrise. Hiccup shrunk back, fully prepared to relinquish the credit for the kill to her; she craved this glory, had worked for it her entire life. Hiccup wasn’t so humble that he didn’t realize she saw him as a rival. Her expression was cold.

After making him sweat for a moment, however, her eyes softened. She reached toward him. _Truce?_

Hiccup took her hand, realizing that his own was embarrassingly sweaty. She reached around and grasped his elbow with her other hand, pulling him up to stand beside her with what looked like minimal effort. She held his gaze and his arm for a few long moments before letting go, raising their joined hands in an expression of victory. They balanced on the Gronckle and stood tall and gazed out over the small crowd, which was cheering and chanting their names.

Hiccup grinned. He felt lightheaded and a little silly, but mostly proud.

When they climbed off the Gronckle (Hiccup tried not to think about it or look at it too much, and tried even harder not to think about _why that was_ ), the other teens flocked to them, bounding over as they separated themselves from the crowd which had amassed to examine the dragon.

“Gods, Astrid, that was so _cool,_ so _you,_ I knew you’d be the next one to kill a dragon, for sure,” Snotlout was gushing. “Remember I had your back every step of the way, except when you killed it, when I wasn’t there.”

Astrid acknowledged him with a bemused quirk of the lips, but crossed her arms pridefully nonetheless.

“That’s a seriously _gnarly_ kill, dude, I don’t know why _everyone_ doesn’t do it like that!” Ruffnut added, slinging an arm over the other girl’s shoulders.

“It’s sloppy,” Astrid corrected her, looking at the Gronckle with distaste. “I’ll get better.”

“It _is_ better,” Tuffnut said, dazed. “Better than that lame-o one-strike stuff.”

“And Hiccup, you hit _another_ one!” Fishlegs squealed. “That’s so _impressive,_ you should be one of those archers, like those raiders from the mainland which Johann always tells us about!”

“I’m pretty sure most of what Johann says is made up, Fishlegs,” Hiccup replied. He smiled to let his friend know he appreciated the compliment. Regardless, he was pretty sure that Johann took as many lies about Berk to the mainland as he brought the opposite way. Tribes which raided as archers on horseback? It didn’t seem likely.

As the other teens shadowed Astrid, showering her with praise, Hiccup felt a large hand come to rest on his arm. “Hey, are you alright?” Fishlegs lowered his voice as he pulled Hiccup aside. His small eyes peered worriedly out from under his brow.

Hiccup heaved a sigh. “Yeah, I’m good. Just tired.” His legs felt heavy, his body overworked. He was hungry, too. And he wanted a bath.

“Mm.” Fishlegs nodded. “You—” he broke off, twiddled his thumbs. “You were really cool,” he squeaked, eyes darting back and forth. He flushed, looking as bashful as Hiccup felt.

“Ah—thanks, Fishlegs,” Hiccup smiled. He waited for his friend to calm down and look him in the eye before placing a tentative hand on his arm. “That really means a lot.”

“I—uh,” the larger boy fought with his words for a few moments before adopting a look of resolve, staring solemnly down at Hiccup. “I think you’ll make a really good chief. And I’ll be proud to follow you.”

Hiccup inhaled, throat constricting inexplicably. He swallowed, feeling the corners of his mouth pull tight.

“Thanks, Fishlegs,” he whispered.

“Hey, guys? What’s that?” Tuffnut asked. Hiccup glanced over, startled, to see his friend pointing with confusion toward the eastern sea. Hiccup squinted, not seeing anything at first.

“Didn’t our ships sail west?” Astrid asked, disbelief saturating her voice.

“And weren’t there _three_ of them?” Snotlout echoed.

Hiccup cocked his head and edged closer, keeping his eyes on the horizon as he slid down into the trench left behind by the Gronckle and clambered up the other side. He could hear the other teens shadowing him as he walked toward the edge of the cliff, squinting harder against the rising sun. He had to be seeing things. He blinked once to clear his vision, but when he opened his eyes the view was the same.

About halfway to the horizon, sailing out of the sunrise, was what appeared to be a large armada of ships.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't think this is what storytellers mean when they refer to the "emotional rollercoaster" effect
> 
> Hiccup and Astrid are just...bapies. They're so young. They're awesome and cool and courageous but also being a Viking and fighting dragons is stressful believe it or not.
> 
> And now the ships. They are Here. Who could it be, hmm? Me biting off more than I can chew? Probably.
> 
> Leave me kudos and/or a comment if it isn't too much trouble! CONSTRUCTIVE criticism (help with fixing a problem if you point it out) is okay. Have a lovely week and stay safe <3


End file.
